The high cost of the film and processing, combined with the burden of carrying extra camera equipment, has limited my film usage to just a few rolls per year.
Last week, I received several processed rolls back from the lab, which accounted for the majority of the film photos I made during 2023.
Among these were a few photos I made on January 24, 2023 during a trip with Conway Scenic’s Snow Plow Extra that cleared to Mountain Junction and then east on the Redstone Branch in North Conway, New Hampshire.
These were exposed on Kodak Ektachrome 100 using a Nikon F3.
Conway Scenic crews clear the switch at Mountain Junction on January 24, 2023.
Conway Scenic crews clear the switch at Mountain Junction on January 24, 2023.
Conway Scenic crews clear the switch at Mountain Junction on January 24, 2023.
Plow Extras are very rare on the Redstone Branch. I wanted to make sure this was recorded for posterity, so I made a few color slides of the move. I’d traveled on the train as far as Mechanic Street, then walked along the North-South road in North Conway to get this image. Until 2022, I lived around the corner from this location.
Plow Extras are very rare on the Redstone Branch. I wanted to make sure this was recorded for posterity, so I made a few color slides of the move. I’d traveled on the train as far as Mechanic Street, then walked along the North-South road in North Conway to get this image. Until 2022, I lived around the corner from this location.
Plow Extras are very rare on the Redstone Branch. I wanted to make sure this was recorded for posterity, so I made a few color slides of the move. I’d traveled on the train as far as Mechanic Street, then walked along the North-South road in North Conway to get this image. Until 2022, I lived around the corner from this location.
I was working with Ektachrome du Jour in my Leica M2. I think this was EPP (ISO 100), which was provided to me by Kodak as a sample when I was studying photography at the Rochester Institute of Photography.
My pal TSH and I were photographing the North East Corridor over the 1988 winter holidays. During a stop over at Newark—Penn Station, I made this festive photo.
Notice the Solari board showing that Amtrak’s Broadway Limited was running 50 minutes late. Can’t take that train today!
Kodak Ektachrome from December 1988. Enlarged section of the above photo.
In recent months I’ve been undertaking a herculean effort. I’m beginning to organize my slide files.
Over the last 40+ years, I have made tens of thousands of slides, while embracing conflicting theories of photographic organization.
Now, I am attempting to consolidate and organize my slide files. In one tub of original boxes, I found a box (one of several) mis-labeled ‘Conrail, Rochester, April 1987, Ektachrome’.
This was a ‘free’ roll of film, given to me as part of photo package from Kodak to students at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Free. No cost to me. At a time when I could barely afford two rolls of Kodachrome a week!
And there was a problem. Giving Ektachrome to a Kodachrome shooter!
I took the film, and I made photos with it. Nothing urgent. Nothing serious. Nothing so important that I’d commit it to Kodachrome.
A more serious problem manifested when I searched for the note sheet that goes with the roll of film. The box said ‘April 1987’, but in fact the photos were exposed on March 11, 1987. I should have known.
Eastward Conrail freight captured at Lincoln Park with a Leica 3A and 65mm lens on EN100 Ektachrome slide film at noon on March 11, 1987.
In the villiage of Chocorua in Tamworth, New Hampshire is an historic mill dam.
I made this atmospheric view of the Chocorua Dam last October on Kodak Ektachrome 100. Using a comparatively slow shutter speed shows movement in the water.
A couple of weeks ago I scanned the color slide with my Epson V600 scanner. Final presentation for viewing here required nominal adjustment in Adobe Lightroom.
We paused last winter at Ely, Vermont where I made this silhouette on Ektachrome of the old Boston & Maine station and its historic train order semaphore.
This was one of several slides I made that day of railroads in Vermont.
Why film? Because it works. Because some photos made on film wouldn’t as well if exposed digitally. But most importantly, because I like film. I made my first Ektachrome color slide c1971, and some 50 years later, I still occasional expose slides.
Canon EOS-3 loaded with Kodak E100; 40mm Canon pancake lens set at f22. Film processed by AgX lab. Slide scanned using an Epson V600 flatbed scanner.
A few weeks ago on Tracking the Light, I described my early experiences with Kodak’s Ektachrome LPP (a warm-tone emulsion with subtle color rendition), of which I received a free-sample from Kodak back in August 1993.
Among the other photos on that roll, was this view exposed shortly after sunrise of Amtrak’s Los Angeles-bound Coast Starlight crossing Southern Pacific’s massive Benicia Bridge near Martinez, California.
Full frame scan of a 35mm Ektachrome LPP slide exposed in August 1993.
I had loaded the film into a second-hand Nikkormat FTN that I fitted an f4.0 Nikkor 200mm telephoto.
This slide sat in the dark until I scanned it on October 6, 2020.
Much enlarged crop of the same slide to better show Amtrak’s Coast Starlight.
