Tag Archives: #Ektachrome

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Palmer Local—February 1979.

In early February 1979, my father drove my brother and me to Palmer, Massachusetts. A visit to the old Palmer Union Station alerted us to a train working in the old Boston & Albany yard to the east.

I encouraged Pop to drive us over to the old B&A freight house, which was adjacent to Haley’s Grain Store. Here we found a former Penn Central SW1500 and a freshly painted Conrail caboose. This was the local which had just finished up its switching and would soon head west to the yard at West Springfield.

My pre-war Leica 3A was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 200, and during the course of our adventure, I exposed several slides.

I was in 7th grade at the time, and my photography skills were marginal. What I find remarkable is that my slides survived all these years. I recently found them mixed in a collection of my father’s slides and recognized them as my own.

Working with Adobe Lightroom, I made a variety of adjustments to the photos to improve their mediocre qualities and make them more interesting to look at.

Scan from original Ektachrome slide without cosmetic modifications.
Improved versions of the top scan. In this version, I’ve made a variety of adjustments to exposure, contrast and color.
Adjusted Ektachrome color slide.

Conrail was then in its infancy and would survive for another 20 years as a class I carrier serving Palmer.

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Ektachrome at Esbenshade Road

Last summer, Kris, Seamus-the-dog and I caught Strasburg Rail Road’s evening train returning from Leaman Place from a vantage point along Esbenshade Road.

I exposed this photograph on Kodak Ektachrome 100 color slide film using a Nikon F3 with f2.0 35mm lens. To make the most of the foreground crops, I made an off-center composition with engine 89 at the center left of the image.

Ektachrome allows for traditional color rendition and contrast that I find distinctive from modern digital images.

This film was processed by AgX Imaging of Sault Saint Marie, Michigan (https://www.agximaging.com) and returned to me last week. I scanned the original photograph using my Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner driven by VueScan 9.8.49 software.

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Horseshoe Curve—Film & Digital

I’ve often carried multiple cameras.

In the mid-1980s, I’d have a Leica rangefinder loaded with Kodachrome and my father’s Rolleiflex Model T with 120-size Verichrome Pan black & white negative film.

In the 1990s, it was multiple Nikons with slide film with various ISO sensitivity.

During the early 2000s, I worked with a Contax G2 rangefinder for wideangle photos and Nikons for telephoto views—all loaded with 100 speed Fujichrome.

Today, I carry Nikon mirrorless digital cameras, and occasionally a Lumix or Fujifilm digital camera, while once in while bringing out one of my 1990s-era Nikon F3s loaded with Ektachrome.

Such was the situation at Horseshoe Curve last October.

Here I’ve made two photos of the same westward Norfolk Southern hopper train. The first photo was exposed on E100 Ektachrome using the F3 with f2.0 35mm lens; the second is a digital photograph made with my Nikon Z7-II.

This comparison is about style, rather than image quality. I make different kinds of photos using different equipment and materials. There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I have both images and they both work for different reasons.

E100 Ektachrome with a Nikon F3 SLR with Nikkor AF f2.0 35mm lens
Nikon Z7-II mirror-less digital camera with 24-70mm lens. The image has been slightly cropped.

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Tyrone—Ektachrome-1

Last October, Kris, Seamus and I chased a westward Norfolk Southern freight on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division from Huntingdon to Tyrone, Pa.

Although I exposed a few digital photos, I’ve been waiting for this image for months.

Yes, I still occasionally expose color slides. However, where I once would shoot several rolls a day, these days it took me almost eight months to work through four rolls of Kodak Ektachrome. Finally, I boxed these up and sent them off to AgX Imaging in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan for E6 processing. https://www.agximaging.com

On Monday, my four boxes of slides were returned to me in good order.

Owing to exceptional selectivity, I had a high ratio of success with the processed photos. A few were disappointing (mostly as the result of underexposure), but there are many very satisfying photos in the selection.

I made this image from the station platform at Tyrone of the NS westward train as it reached the apex of the curve. I was working with a vintage Nikon F3 with f2.0 135mm lens loaded with Ektachrome E100. I scanned the slide using a Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner.

Below are two versions of the scan. The first is the unmodified scan, more or less the way it looked right out of the scanner (converted to JPG and scaled for internet presentation). The second is after some nominal post-processing. More slides to follow!

unmodified scan
Adjusted scan.

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Ektachrome of the Snow

I don’t expose very much slide film any more.

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.

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Newark—Penn Station, Holiday Wonderland-1988.

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.

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Classic Chrome: Conrail 1987

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.

Take me back to 1987!

I wish I’d had more free Ektachrome!

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Chocorua Dam on Ektachrome

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.

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Semaphore Silhouette-Ely, Vermont.

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.

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NHV on LPP—October 1993.

During the summer of 1993, Kodak had introduced a new flavor of Ektachrome slide film with a rating of 100 ISO and a warm color balance.

I bought a few rolls for use imaging trains with New England autumn foliage.

On October 6th of that year I drove to Groveton, NH to intercept the NHV local that worked the old Boston & Maine line toward Whitefield.

It was raining and dark when I pictured the train ambling along a few miles south of Groveton.

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Sunrise at the Benicia Bridge with Ektachrome—August 1993.

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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.

See: http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/2020/10/06/kodak-lpp-a-tunnel-motor-and-a-camel/

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.

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