On June 15, 2016, I posted two views of Pan Am Railway’s leased Slug Set working in East Deerfield hump service and paused on the Connecticut River Bridge east of the yard.
I asked readers to voice an opinion on their preferred image, while explaining that one was exposed on black & white film the traditional way and the other exposed digitally as a monochrome image.
I’ve weighed the comments, email and Facebook messages and found that the response was more or less evenly split, with a slight leaning to the top image (film). One respondent voiced a dislike of both images (see comments).
Below are the two vertical images with details of how they were made.
Number 1; exposed on Ilford HP5 black & white negative film using a Leica 3A with Nikkor 35mm lens. Processed in Kodak HC110 developer.Number 2. This digital image was made using my FujiFilm X-T1 in a monochrome mode. I altered the output through the addition of a digital ‘red’ filter, that slightly darkened the green and blue areas of the image including the locomotive on the bridge. This adjustment was made in-camera, not in post processing.
Both images were scaled for internet presentation using Lightroom.
Below is a comparison between two photos; one exposed digitally and one made with film. (Hint: click on Tracking the Light to see both).
I made these the other day of Pan Am’s hump engine working on the Connecticut River Bridge at East Deerfield, Massachusetts.
I won’t bore you with excessive detail, but one was made as a black & white image with a digital camera . The other was exposed in a traditional manner on black & white film, processed chemically and then scanned and scaled.
Number 1.Number 2.
So: which image do you prefer? (number one or number two).
Oh, and by the way, it is up to you to decide which was made with film and which was not.
Yesterday, April 13, 2013, Pan Am Railways hosted a passenger excursion over the historic Boston & Maine route from Boston to Mechanicville. My father, Richard Jay Solomon, was among the passengers, and he sent me regular updates on his progress. This inspired me to revisit images such as this one.
Exposed on Kodachrome using a Leica 3A fitted with a 65mm Elmar and Visoflex.
Scouring the archives, I found this Kodachrome slide from the 1980s. It shows Guilford’s Boston & Maine mainline at Rices, near Charlemont, Massachusetts at 11:05 am on June 26, 1986. A westward freight led by B&M’s lone GP40-2 slug set (on left) is holding at the signals for an eastward train coming from Mechanicville, New York.
This image was never among my best photographs. At the time, I was using my old Leica 3A fitted with a 65mm Elmar using a Visoflex reflex arrangement. To gauge exposure, I used an antique hand-held General Electric photo cell. The camera arrangement allowed for a sharp image but was awkward to use. More to the point, the meter wasn’t very accurate and my sense for exposure wasn’t highly tuned. As a result, this slide was overexposed, as were most of my efforts from the day.
Thankfully, my choice of film at the time was Kodachrome 64, which was relatively tolerant of inaccurate exposure. So while, this slide appears too bright when projected on screen, the emulsion retained sufficient detail to be recovered digitally. I scanned the slide using my Epson V600 scanner, then corrected for my flawed exposure with Adobe Photoshop by manipulating the ‘Curves’ function. The end result isn’t objectionable.
Exposed on Kodachrome using a Leica 3A fitted with a 65mm Elmar via a Visoflex.
