Nostalgia & History > Union Pacific Cutie

UP No. B-21, presumably some type of inspection car. It seems to have sufficient marker lights! East Los Angeles shops, New Year's Day 1956. Also, the last time I used the Kodak disaster aka Ektachrome.

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Interesting. Thanks.

Regarding faded Ektachrome and other films, I am no enhancement expert. That said, simply invoking the "Auto Levels" function in Photoshop Elements (about $50) yielded the attached result:

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And here is my attempt at color correction.

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It has most likely been scrapped. Too bad! What a hoot to put rubber tires on it and drive around town. Would be a great "Hot August Nights" cruiser.

Great job on the color correction. God bless Photoshop. I have some Ektachrome disasters too (don't we all?) that I almost wrote off. I'll have to dig 'em out, scan 'em and do some magic. Let me put on my lab man hat a minute: All the 'chrome films were real sensitive to chemical imbalances(aren't we all?). Same with chemical temperatures. Kodachrome was a red-cyan shift and Ektachrome was a blue-yellow shift, depending on stuff like developer temperature. The magenta is just old age (like me, but I'm grey, not magenta).

Have fun, be safe,
Doc Jones

DocJones Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great job on the color correction. God bless
> Photoshop. I have some Ektachrome disasters too
> (don't we all?) that I almost wrote off. I'll have
> to dig 'em out, scan 'em and do some magic. Let me
> put on my lab man hat a minute: All the 'chrome
> films were real sensitive to chemical
> imbalances(aren't we all?). Same with chemical
> temperatures. Kodachrome was a red-cyan shift and
> Ektachrome was a blue-yellow shift, depending on
> stuff like developer temperature. The magenta is
> just old age (like me, but I'm grey, not
> magenta).
>
> Have fun, be safe,
> Doc Jones


Doc,

You're too young....the original Ektachrome came back from Kodak in magenta. Nothing to do with age, just Kodak crap.

Shot a lot of Ektachrome...never had any problems.

That is a great historical photo. Not to get into the film fight, but Kodachrome processed correctly and stored properly doesn't shift colors as it was based on B&W film technology and came out in the mid 1930s with color dyes added later in the processing. All of my Kodachrome from the 1960s on and my Fathers Kodachrome shots from the '40s and '50s processed by Kodak still look great,except for some of it processed by Drewry and Fotomat, who seemed to have lost their chemical quality control, or maybe never had it to begin with. Ektachrome (which I have always hated due to its blue/green shift right from the start and being no where near as sharp as Kodachrome) along with many other color films with different type of color dyes already in the film itself seem to be shifting over the years.

I have a few rolls of SEARS film that I had to use to take photos of a weed spraying train in the Santa Barbara yard. Now it is shifting colors and I used my Nikon scanner to fix it during the scan. The scanner has DIGITAL ICE, a software that can fix several film problems during a scan. One of those fixes is correcting film that has lost color or shifted color through the years. I set the color correction fix at about the number 4 setting as the slides still had some color but had not shifted too much. I scanned them that way and the resulting scan fixed the color shift so that the shots looked normal when they were acquired by my Photoshop Elements program. So if the software to do that is in your scanner, you can do it that way too as well as fix the color in Photoshop or other photo editing program. Would post a couple of those photos but they are on my photo/video work computer and not this one.

C.C.Chas.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/10 21:38 by choochoocharlie.

masterphots Wrote:

> UP No. B-21, presumably some type of inspection
> car.

Appears to be a Buda inspection car. See also:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1574241
http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00019454

choochoocharlie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That is a great historical photo. Not to get into
> the film fight, but Kodachrome processed correctly
> and stored properly doesn't shift colors as it was
> based on B&W film technology and came out in the
> mid 1930s with color dyes added later in the
> processing. All of my Kodachrome from the 1960s on
> and my Fathers Kodachrome shots from the '40s and
> '50s processed by Kodak still look great,except
> for some of it processed by Drewry and Fotomat,
> who seemed to have lost their chemical quality
> control, or maybe never had it to begin with.
> Ektachrome (which I have always hated due to its
> blue/green shift right from the start and being no
> where near as sharp as Kodachrome) along with many
> other color films with different type of color
> dyes already in the film itself seem to be
> shifting over the years.
>
> I have a few rolls of SEARS film that I had to use
> to take photos of a weed spraying train in the
> Santa Barbara yard. Now it is shifting colors and
> I used my Nikon scanner to fix it during the scan.
> The scanner has DIGITAL ICE, a software that can
> fix several film problems during a scan. One of
> those fixes is correcting film that has lost color
> or shifted color through the years. I set the
> color correction fix at about the number 4 setting
> as the slides still had some color but had not
> shifted too much. I scanned them that way and the
> resulting scan fixed the color shift so that the
> shots looked normal when they were acquired by my
> Photoshop Elements program. So if the software to
> do that is in your scanner, you can do it that way
> too as well as fix the color in Photoshop or other
> photo editing program. Would post a couple of
> those photos but they are on my photo/video work
> computer and not this one.
>
> C.C.Chas.

Interesting. I have many Kodachromes from the 1940s and not one has any color shift. Look like they were shot yesterday. Only reason I tried (my dad got me the film) EK was to get a little more film speed then the Kodachrome ASA10 (up from ASA8!) in those days. I always thought it was Kodachome that had the dyes in the film, rather than the E-6 films. Guess not.

masterphots Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> UP No. B-21, presumably some type of inspection
> car. It seems to have sufficient marker lights!
> East Los Angeles shops, New Year's Day 1956.
> Also, the last time I used the Kodak disaster aka
> Ektachrome.

It had to be E-2 process Ektachrome from that period (1956). That was especially prone to fading and color shifting, especially if you processed it at home (I speak from experience).

Kodak E-6 process films (introduced in the mid-1960s) are a different matter. My slides using that film are doing fine. Today's highly-rated Fujichrome slide films are essentially the same process.


Ray

There are some REALLY talented, Photoshop savvy guys here, who make the TO experience that much better for the rest of us. Thank you, Gentlemen!

Bob Callahan
Monticello, IN