Tips and Technique

Boston & Maine 4268 in the Sun: FujiFilm JPG versus Iridient Processed RAW

Last week, Conway Scenic Railroad temporarily evicted former Boston & Maine F7A 4268 from stall 4 at the North Conway, NH roundhouse where the locomotive has been undergoing an operational restoration by the 470 Club (that also owns sister F7A 4266 which is operational at CSRR).

Saturday morning (November 21, 2020) brilliant late-autumn presented excellent light to photograph this relic of mid-20th century dieselization. B&M 4268 was originally an EMD demonstrator and features the builder’s less-common ‘passenger pilot’, which makes it distinctive among B&M’s F-unit.

I made these photos using my FujiFilm X-T1 with recently acquired 16-55mm Fujinon lens. After exposure, I converted the camera-RAW files to DNG format using Iridient X-Transformer software, which does a more effective job of transforming these files for conversion by Adobe Lightroom, than either Lightroom itself or other image processing software.

After conversion, I imported the DNG files into Lightroom and made some minor adjustments to color temperature, contrast, and highlight/shadow detail plus saturation.

Below are examples of the in-camera FujiFilm JPG (using Velvia color profile, and a comparison DNG file converted from RAW using the Iridient software.

All photos were then scaled and exported using Lightroom. 

Scaled and watermarked but otherwise un-modified JPG file exposed with the Velvia color profile using my FujiFilm XT1.
Camera RAW file converted to a DNG file using Iridient X-Transformer and then imported into Lightroom for adjustment to color temp, contrast, and exposure)
Scaled and watermarked but otherwise un-modified JPG file exposed with the Velvia color profile using my FujiFilm XT1.

Camera RAW file converted to a DNG file using Iridient X-Transformer and then imported into Lightroom for adjustment to color temp, contrast, and exposure)

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