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I recently rediscovered four carousels of color slides which I had taken in the late 1970's and early 1980's. A railfan friend in Kentucky scanned them so that I have digital images. Most are the clumsy, amatuerish, efforts of a teenager with his first real camera but there were a few hidden gems in the lot - many including Amtrak SDP40's in phase I paint.
This one from October 1979 is not one of those BUT it was deemed worthy of inclusion over at RailPictures.net. The clock is ticking on my 15 minutes of fame -
I'm thinking perhaps the key is to take pictures of a bunch of ordinary railroad things, put them in a box and forget about them for 30 years, and then, when you rediscover them...... then you might have something of significance.
To keep 'on theme' here is a 'not railpictures.net worthy' image of the northbound 'Floridian' on the former Monon street trackage in New Albany, IN....... circa 1977.
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Good photo David. I wonder how many of us have treasures like that slowly fading away in slide carousels.
Gilbert B Norman Member # 1541
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I have my photos from back in the days when I took 'em. That roundly covers 1955-1984.
I plan to donate them, along with TRAINS v1#1 to present, to an NRHS chapter.
notelvis Member # 3071
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I suppose that I should begin giving some thought as to what happens to my collection after I'm gone.
As both my father and grandfather lived well into their 70's, I'd like to think that I have 20-25 years left to enjoy my railroad things myself!
And palmland - I would imagine that many of us have stuff fading away. I'm not confidant that I've found the last of my stash yet. Fortunately, the computer gives us the means to preserve and, when neccessary, touch up these images before they deteriorate further.
RRRICH Member # 1418
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Last year I put my last 30 years' worth of color slides of train trips (and other things) on CD's -- they now take up a lot less space than 40 or 50 boxes of slides!!! Unfortunately, I have never been a very good photographer, so most of what I had once hoped would be good rail pictures are out of focus or too dark to see plainly. Now and then I put some of them on my web site, but I have very few decent shots to choose from.
HopefulRailUser Member # 4513
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Tell me more. How do you put the slides on CD?
notelvis Member # 3071
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quote:Originally posted by HopefulRailUser: Tell me more. How do you put the slides on CD?
I'm not sure Vicki. I was fortunate to have connected on another forum with a railfan who has the gear and is willing to scan old slides belonging to other railfans.
And Rich, yes - most of what I took is poorly lighted or has something in the way..... only a handful of really good photos out of 500-some. My photography career came to an abrubt end when I left my camera in a Montreal taxi about the same time I started performing with competitive DCI drum and bugle corps. (In fact - I had taken the train to Montreal to attend a DCI competition.) Never did sink any significant money into camera gear or photography after that.
For anyone who is interested, here is a link to the photo sharing site where my entire collection is available -
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Vicki -- it's actually pretty easy to do. The first thing I did was to scan my slides in groups of 4 at a time -- you need a scanner that does slides -- mine is an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo model. You can either scan the slides directly onto a CD, or, in my case, I scanned them all into my "My Pictures" folder, and attempted to edit a few of them with Adobe photo editing software. After I got them the way I wanted them, I just copied them over to the CD's in groups, renamed them appropriately, and put several labeled folders on each CD. My computer (HP Pavilion) has some built-in "wizards" that help in copying photos.
Henry Kisor Member # 4776
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Vicki -- Let me echo RRRich's post. I too have an Epson photo scanner with slide attachment, and have found it very useful for converting color slides to digital files. That can be time-consuming but it's actually fun to do, and you can use Photoshop Elements or another similar simple photo utility to fix scratches and dust. Such scanners are available online for around $100-$125. (I buy my photo stuff from B&H in New York. No sales tax outside NY State and shipping is often free.)
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