{"id":37187,"date":"2023-09-20T07:31:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T11:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=37187"},"modified":"2023-09-19T21:01:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T01:01:10","slug":"more-classic-conrail-look-ma-no-ditchlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/more-classic-conrail-look-ma-no-ditchlights\/","title":{"rendered":"More Classic Conrail-‘Look Ma No Ditchlights!’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently I retrieved several cartons of slides long stored out of sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of these were in their original yellow Kodak boxes. By-in-large these are the slides that didn’t meet my exacting standards at the time of exposure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I’ve illustrated in previous episodes of Tracking the Light, today these boxes contain lost gems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A photograph that I rejected 30 years ago for a minor defect may look pretty good today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This view of Conrail C30-7A No. 6550 eastbound at Palmer, Massachusetts caught my attention. Not only is this the class-leader for one of my favorite Conrail locomotives, but it was exposed in bright October sun in a style much the way I’d like to photograph the train today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what was wrong with this photo? Why did this sit in the dark for 33 years? Three points come mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One:<\/strong> the photo is ever so slightly off level, probably about 1 degree. Back in the 1990s I was very sensitive about maintaining level. I typically carried a line-level with me at all times and almost always used a tripod to help ensure level. This is less of a problem today because my Nikon Z series and Lumix LX7 both feature a level in the heads up display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two:<\/strong> My composition is ever so slightly ‘off’. All things being equal, I should have positioned the camera slightly lower to the ground so that I could see a gap above the top of the rail to more clearly show the wheels better. Also this may have minimized the trees behind the locomotives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three: <\/strong>I was a film snob in 1990. Normally, I used Kodachrome 25. But for some season I loaded my camera with Kodachrome 64. I found this film did a poor job of rendering the sky which tended to appear as a greenish blue ‘aqua’ shade rather than the bluer ‘azure’ that was common with K25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I can’t do much about problem No. two, fixing the level and adjusting the color profile are easily accomplished in post processing. The top photo is my unaltered original; the bottom is my adjusted version, and I altered the sky to appear more like it would with K25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Scan from my original Kodachrome 64 slide. This is unaltered (without correction). Exposed using a Nikon F3T with f4.0 Nikkor 200mm lens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
This my corrected version of the orginal scan. My goal was to make it look more like a Kodachrome 25 slide. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what was wrong with this photo? Why did this sit in the dark for 33 years? Three points come mind . . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6060,10,6108,48],"tags":[5186,41,53,104],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Conrail_6550_eb_at_CP83_Palmer_Mass_Oct_21_1990_KR_with_Nikon\u00a9BrianSolomon_119005.jpg?fit=1800%2C1212","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-9FN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37187"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37191,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37187\/revisions\/37191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}