photography

Stacks on the old Erie Railroad—36 Years ago

3:36pm, May 14, 1988; milepost 309 (as measured west from Jersey City) near Cameron Mills, N.Y., Conrail intermodal train TV-301.

I exposed this photo in the reverse curves along Conrail’s former Erie Railroad mainline in New York’s scenic Canisteo River Valley east of Cameron Mills.

In the late 1980s, this valley was a favorite place of mine for photographing trains, and I made dozens of trips along the old Erie Railroad during those years.

This image was exposed on Professional Kodachrome 25 using my Leica M2 rangefinder fitted with a Leitz Wetzlar Elmarit 135mm lens.

My exposure was f4.5 1.250th second. While this was my standard ‘full sun’ daylight setting, the resulting slide was about 1/2 stop too dark. This was in part because of the reduced reflective light within the confines of the valley combined with slight backlighting of the train.

After scanning using a Nikon LS-5000 (Supe Coolscan5000) slide scanner, I made a variety of small adjustments to TIF file in regards to color balance/color temperature, exposure and constrast using Lightroom to produce a more pleasing photograph.

One element of this image that’s always annoyed me is the automobile peaking out on the left side of the leading locomotive. It would be a better photo if the automobile was further ahead of the train or totally conceiled by it.

This is a small defect, considering that Conrail (as a class 1 railroad) has been gone nearly 25 years.

This is the un-modified TIF file that reflects the overall appearance of the original PKM color slide. Below is the adjusted scan.
This is the same scan following adjustments to color, exposure and contrast.

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