Nostalgia & History > WABAC 139/ Amtrak #6 Making a Case for Color Film

Mid 80's

SP's Daylight-Lite 7399 turned up on the point of Amtrak's CZ at least once...
The first photo is crossing the Long Ravine Trestle- today over I-80, but in more interesting times, over the NCNG RR.
The roll by is at Magra.
SR

I'm pretty sure that's the SP's Oregon on the rear.

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Those namby-pamby railfans today with their automated color 3D movie, wide angle digital SLR gadgets don't know real photography, I reckon. Just click on something, Photosclock the saturation up to "burn eyeballs", then post it on the Web. You had to be a real man to go out and photograph in the old days, my boy, and so did the women. No instant gratification and selfies and such hogwash. Color was for wussies that didn't know a flash bulb from that other thing. We'd all be a little better off if we only saw things in black & white... Oh wait, that's what's wrong with Congress, isn't it? Nevermind.

EO

Back in MY day we processed our film with snowmelt-  AND WE LIKED IT!
SR

BoilingMan Wrote:
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> Back in MY day we processed our film with
> snowmelt-  AND WE LIKED IT!
> SR

Or ice melt out of the Rouge River!

EO

A little dab 'l do ya
with that stuff!
SR

(Okay Ed, be fair, we need to give the other kids a chance...)

"Fair?" HA! That's a good one, SR!
EO

 HA !!! ... here's one for ya ... growing up i wasn't a real big photographer moreso relying on my young possibly "ADD" mind to depend on my cerebral retention of events i witnessed which i didn't realize then i'd forget in time ... my family took a lot of instamatic photos but no one owned a REAL CAMERA per se ... no get this, when i was around 10, probably not knowing what to get for my B'day and/or Christmas, my mom and pop bought me a film developing dark room kit ... i thought it was really cool that i'd be able to make photos from the camera but there was one BIG PROBLEM with this whole idea ... THEY NEVER BOUGHT ME A FILM CAMERA TO TAKE PICTURES TO DEVELOP !!!! ...​ ​​​so there sat unused for years, a perfectly good tool for me to record and save events, especially railroad stuff ... my life story ... i loved my parents but their thinking process at times was something to be desired ... altho pop was one of the best railroaders i knew and that statement is said without biased ... the man knew his job and did it with pride and integrity ... he taught me the art of learning physical characteristics ... a peave of mine ...

The millennial's wouldn't know what to do with a Minolta 101. F8@250

Posted from Android

In the early eighties I bought a color film home developing thing from sharper image. Well, it wasn't sharper, but sure interesting. You didn't want to light up the Woodstove when using this thing.

Posted from Android

Out_Of_Service Wrote:
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>  HA !!! ... here's one for ya ... growing up
> i wasn't a real big photographer moreso relying
> on my young possibly "ADD" mind to depend on my
> cerebral retention of events i witnessed which i
> didn't realize then i'd forget in time ... my
> family took a lot of instamatic photos but no one
> owned a REAL CAMERA per se ...
>... THEY NEVER BOUGHT
> ME A FILM CAMERA TO TAKE PICTURES TO DEVELOP
> !!!! ...​ ​​​so there sat unused for
> years, a perfectly good tool for me to record and
> save events, especially railroad stuff

Hey, you think you had it bad, I used a bakelite 616 box camera that was a freebie from Bank of America. Today's photographers aren't man enough to handle a box camera. I could have been a Steinheimer with a good camera*, by golly!

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be "fair" and not comment any further. Sorry, SR. What was this thread originally about, anyway?

EO
*and a heck of a lot more photographic talent

Talk about a bad camera, my Dad and I had a grand opening for our Atlantic gas station in 1966. We gave away free cameras but the B&W film was sold for $0.25 for three rolls. I actually made a roll of sharp images of that day with that junk plastic lens. When I was a teen I was appointed the family photographer. I had the obligatory Kodak Brownie 120 and made piles of square blurry family slides. When I tried shooting moving trains I got absolute blurs with that Ektachrome ASA25 film and didn't shoot trains again for 20 years. Then it was an Instamatic 126 with those funny little flash cubes. I eventually was given an ancient Kodak Signet 35mm from 1955 I used some B&W and color print film, wow real pictures! I missed two generations of locomotives before I had a decent camera a Pentax K1000 and a zoom lense to exercise my photographic skills. I wore out two of those cameras before joining the dogotal gang. Now if I ever get around to retiring and had time to start scanning those boxes full of prints... all the slides went with the first wife, gone forever.
Gonut

Sheesh!

I busted a few teeth back in the day learning the relationship
between f-stop, ISO, and shutter speed. Kodak spelled it out in
the inserts that came with the film. Knowing those tricks
really comes in handy with today's digi masterpiece cameras.
Sure, a person can put one of these fancy digi babies on auto and
hold the button to take 12 shots in 2 seconds, but if you've only got
crap to start with, photoshop (I use bleeding edge gimp-2.9.3,)
nothing is gonna bail you out.

Know the fundamentals and the rest will follow.

John.

I worked #6 in the 1980s and the various Daylight-painted diesels showed up some-what often.

Only two of them.. 7342 and 7399

I can't remember the name of the company that made the developer and fixer that I used back in the 1950's.  The bottles were square.   Anyone remember a non Kodak developer/fixer?

Well, maybe 2.5...
Wasn't 7342 painted differently on each side, or they changed it, or something?
SR

BoilingMan Wrote:
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> Well, maybe 2.5...
> Wasn't 7342 painted differently on each side, or
> they changed it, or something?
> SR

Yeah, both. The different side thing was intended to be sort of an allegory in paint and metal of the Southern Pacific experience: the left side did not know what the right side was doing. Drum riff, please!

Why do I always come up with the good stuff too late in the thread?
SR? SR? ... well crap

EO



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/16 00:40 by hogheaded.

Minolta SRT-101 was my first SLR. I got it used and the light meter was busted, so I had to use an external light meter. I bet there's not 10 "Millennials" on the planet that would know what to do with a light meter...

Much of this WABAC series, and all of my AFT series last year, was shot with an SRT-101.  I still have it- a great camera!
SR