Steam & Excursion > Compare The Same Locomotive In B & W And In Color!

While most railfans shot exclusively black & white film for nearly all the 1930's through until the mid-1960's some did experiment with color film in both slide and negative formats. Let's compare the different results achieved in these 2 different formats.

For this comparison I have chosen one of my favorite logging locomotives (surprising huh?). She is Weyerhaeuser Timber Co. 2-6-6-2 #8 stopped for oil at Camp 9 on their Klamath Falls line in September 1956.

Harold F. Stewart was on hand to record the scene first with his trusty 616 black & white film camera and then with his newer 35mm color slide film camera. Same engine, same time, same spot - but different results.

Well, what do you think? Both camera's yeilded excellent results. Which medium do you prefer?


Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/15 03:48 by LoggerHogger.

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I will vote for the Black and White as just a bit more detail is visible.

Both! Two are better than one. It would be interesting to see what colorizing would do for the B&W, taking the colors from the color shot.

Any photo is better than none.

I love the transition, but where's Judy Garland and the tin man?

Look how much the clouds have changed in that short amount of time.

Normally I would say color. But, the color film has to much dark in places and hides a lot of detail. Have to go with B&W on this one.

The color in the film reminds me of the "Technicolor" movies at that time. It could be worked on a bit.
B&W seems to fit steam perfectly. I guess it's what you're used to. Being a Frisco fanatic, color shots for me are rare.

The color shot probably began life in this range before age began the inevitable shift towards magenta.

Cheers,
Jack

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Wish I had photo shop.

I prefer the B&W, as I preferred shooting B&W, sometimes with a yellow filter, back in the day.

Its possible they may have had red rock for ballast there but don't know for sure. I used to shoot both types of Kodak film, finally went to slide film so it could be blown up more due to no grain like print film. Also think it was called Kodacrome, it had a red shift while Ectacrome had blue as I remember. Now just shoot with digital cam much easier to do and keep on disc.

It is interesting to note the camera differences too. The slide came from a lens with a few mm longer focal length and quite a bit more barrel distortion. The slide film also had higher contrast (not unusual).

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

The ballast rock that WTCo used was red cinder rock from the lava formations here in Central Oregon. This was used all over the WTCo system in Klamath Falls.

Martin

tomstp Wrote:
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> Normally I would say color. But, the color film
> has to much dark in places and hides a lot of
> detail. Have to go with B&W on this one.

I think the attached may be closer to the original image before it started to color fade, though it is probably still too dark in places.

Looking at the intensity range of the three colors in Martin's original image, you can see that the red runs from 0 to 255, but the blue and green have considerably shortened ranges, ending up around 0-150 or 0-200, depending on the color. Those can be stretched back out to pretty much restore the original colors, but in doing this detail will have been lost, and this will be most obvious at the low end.

After restoring the intensity range on the colors I slightly boosted the levels in the shadows to get them up out of the mud. This lost some of the cloud detail that probably would have been in the original image, but it got to the place that you can see the bits of the motion on the engine. That also, while probably being darker than the B&W, may not have been as dark as it is in this attempt at adjustment.

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The two images certainly show the differences between color and B&W. I prefer the B&W for this one. Color was Kodachrome? ASA, or ISO?

I fiddled with it for a few minutes in PS. Not sure I did it any good.

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I knew trees grew fast in the Pacific NW but the one over the cab was exceptional!!

Looks pretty good to me. I've spent an awfully long time around Ponderosa and that red volcanic cinder and the colors are right about where they should be.

Taylor

Posted from iPhone

Color!