Railfan Technology > Dark Slides-Rescued!

As many of us, I have been scanning my slides using an automatic feeder and post scan processing (I have a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000) with very satisfying results. Over times I have been further processing interesting slides and posted them on Flickr for everybody to enjoy. When I started processing slides from Conrail on the Riverline on Hudson's west shore, I noticed many high contrast slides. As the dark areas did not reveal much detail even with post processing I nearly put them in the reject box. Photography on the north-south Riverline can be challenging, in the morning the sun comes from the river side, and on the interesting sections there is not much room between tracks and river, in the afternoon much of the line is in the shade. On top of that I do like photography in transient light early morning (were traffic usually was good) or evenings. No wonder I ended up with many close rejects.

But then I discovered the manual setting on the scanner (after two decades LOL), and the proverbial light bulb went off! I could scan different exposures of the same slide (using the gain control and turning off the auto post processing, but leaving ICE  on). Maybe I could use an HDR program to join the different exposures? This worked like a charm and saved many slides from oblivion. The Conrail Riverline album with many saved slides can be found on Flickr at: www.tinyurl.com/TEphotography

A few before and after samples below and in the next posts.

Thomas Eckhardt
Hurricane Utah



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/16 14:23 by Krokodil.

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Another pair:

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Last pair:

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Nice.  Amazing what can be done in the digital age.
Where on the River Line was the last shot taken?

rfprr

I'm liking your shots :-)

Not to steal your thunder, but I 'hacked' on this one
just a bit... I first tried the original, but it was
too far to the left (lots of shadows) but your second
had lots of shadow detail, so I adjusted the levels a
bit to even more favor the shadows, and then I did a
bit of tone mapping with Mantiuk-06.

I don't expect that I'm doing your shot a lot of justice,
as I suspect that there is a lot more to work with in
the original slide.

You are on the money with manual adjustments to your
images. Fiddle some more and more light bulbs will
come on for you, but don't blind yourself in the light ;-)

John.

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This was taken at West Point, have not been there since 1999. With security being increased, as a civilian I don' t think one has access to this spot anymore, and I assume that the NYC signals are also history.

Thomas Eckhardt

Thanks for the adjustments, the compressed TO format seems to influence the darknes somewhat as well. I usually adjust in PS using a black backdrop, makes the subtle tones really pop out. Maybe I should Try to post with black frame (another light bulb going off....).

Thomas

Krokodil Wrote:
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> This was taken at West Point, have not been there
> since 1999. With security being increased, as a
> civilian I don' t think one has access to this
> spot anymore, and I assume that the NYC signals
> are also history.
>
> Thomas Eckhardt

Nice location.  Guessing on the north side of the Point.
Coal for Stony Point perhaps.

rfprr

Indeed coal for Tomkins Cove plant. Looks like they delivered only part of a full train.  The coal train quite frequently had NS power on it running through down from Selkirk yard, and light or with empties back.

Thomas

Krokodil Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for the adjustments, the compressed TO
> format seems to influence the darknes somewhat as
> well. I usually adjust in PS using a black
> backdrop, makes the subtle tones really pop out.
> Maybe I should Try to post with black frame
> (another light bulb going off....).
>
> Thomas

Just to be sure I checked my last submission.  By attaching in T/O's at exactly 1000 px wide there was no compression. ie upload was 507KB and I downloaded my own photo, and it was 507KB, I am assuming there is no compression in the view sent.   Another site does compress.

Bob

Adjustments are looking very good. A big improvement on the re-dos.

Stanley Jackowski
Valrico, FL