KiwiRail DL 9262Koputaroa Koputaroa

After being inspired by the superb old slide pictures of @Maersk.146 , I have decided to experiment on film photography again.

Film used to be my main technology for railway photography during the years 2006-2012. I bought DSLR as I became mostly interested in high-speed rail. Now whilst in New Zealand, I have obtained Canon FTb from 1972 and run some Kodak Ektar films through it. I am pretty happy with the results.

Photography is a form of art where beauty is in the eyes of the viewer - therefore everybody has the right to agree or disagree with my love to film. My conclusions of the film experiment are the following:
- Kodak Ektar has outstanding color saturation that is excellent especially during sunny weather and advantageous over DSLR;
- The level of detail on 35mm film is not as high as on full-frame DSLR. Medium format film could have comparable detail;
- Due to the low ISO speed of film, the fastest possible shutter speed is 1/1000 s. It is usable only for the situations where train speed is relatively low, up to 120 km/h. For high-speed rail, the film is complicated.

@Kees - Thanks for the mention! Yes, I liked Ektar 100 print film, too, though I did not use it a lot for rail photography (it obviously does a fine job!). The vast majority of my older pics were done with Kodachrome 64, which of course is no longer made at all. K-25 was the gold standard of film, but so dreadfully slow that I rarely used it. Now there are no E-6 films that replicate the range and saturation of Kodachrome. For some reason, E-6 film and processing just cannot capture the details of locomotive headlights the way K-14 processing did for Kodachrome, for example. Digital does not capture those details, either, but though film cameras can be had pretty cheaply these days, I probably will not go back. I congratulate you on your decision to experiment with film, however, and look forward to seeing your results! So far, very nice !

@Kees You shouldn't have too much trouble with high speed rail in New Zealand!

@Kempy72 Yes NZ freight trains are freakingly fast. By track condition you would expect freight train 20 km/h, actually they do 100 km/h and above

@Kees I grew up there in the days when normal freights did 50kph and express was 70 or 80. It was a big deal when passenger trains were allowed to do 100! Sitting in the rear cab of a Silver Fern Railcar doing 120 between Marton and Palmerston North!