photography

Classic Chrome Color COrrection—Coal Train at Galena, Illinois.

On August 13, 1994, I traveled with Mike Danneman to the Mississippi River. At East Dubuque, Illinois we caught up with a Chicago Central & Pacific coal train working eastbound on the old Illinois Central.

Mike was familiar with the territory and after making a few photos on the joint Burlington Northern-CC&P line, we drove to Galena to catch the train working up grade out of the Mississippi Valley.

The weather was less than ideal; a ‘heavy’ summer’ afternoon—hot humid and overcast.

Working with my Nikon F3T and f4 200mm lens, I made this view of the train crawling by the old Illinois Central station.

As previously described on Tracking the Light, Kodachrome 25 slide film had a cyan to red color bias (cyan when fresh, red when aged).

To correct for the cyan tint and adjust contrast, I imported the scan into Adobe Lightroom for a few nominal corrections. Below are scaled Jpgs from both the uncorrected and corrected files.

Unadjusted scan, scaled for internet.
Scan after modification with Adobe Lightroom and scaled for internet.
Lightroom work window showing adjustment sliders at right.

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