Also some tips from Paul Dolkos ( a well known model railroad photographer )
How do you light your scenes?
Everything is taken on a tripod using continuous light sources. I use Lowel Tota- and Omni-lights—you can shoot under fluorescents, but the lighting is very diffused. With hot lights, you can create shadows, like the sun.
What equipment do you use?
I don’t need a lot of horsepower, as far as cameras go. I started with a Rolleiflex and I had a Linhof 4x5. Now I use a couple of very basic Canons. I started shooting digital several years ago with the first EOS Digital Rebel. I decided I needed a backup, so I just bought a Rebel T1i with the 18–55mm f/3.5–5.6 IS kit lens. It’s perfect for model railroading. It focuses close (9 inches) and stops down to as much as f/36, which is very important. We’re taking photographs of things fairly close up, and you need the depth of field to go maybe six feet back. You can’t just have the front of the locomotive in focus and have everything else fuzzy.
Do you achieve your depth of field solely in the camera?
I use software called Helicon Focus for extended depth of field and focus-stacking. You take several photographs at different focal points, and the software takes the sharpest point of each exposure and combines it into a single exposure. That means I can have a finger practically touching the lens in focus, and 20 feet away have the wall in focus. If it’s a routine picture that won’t get blown up, I’ll stop down to f/29 or higher to get the depth of field. But if it could be on the magazine’s cover or a double-page spread, I open the lens up where it should be, f/8.