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August 1936. "Grain elevators at Dumas, Texas." Medium format negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe
That's what we called them when I was growing up -- many, many years ago.
With the bright Texas sun, Arthur could do f/16 no problem and still have a reasonable shutter speed to handhold. The classic "sunny 16" rule says that in bright sunlight, use f/16 and an inverse of the film speed (50 asa would be 1/50) The only trouble is, back then there were Kodak speeds, Weston film speeds, and GE speeds, none of which corresponded directly to today's film speeds.
"The route is through wind-swept region of seemingly endless prairies to Dumas (Alt. 3,868, Pop. 700), a town born on cattle, developed on agriculture, and thriving on recent oil developments. Two large carbon black plants utilize sour gas and pour from their retorts a constant cloud of heavy black smoke, low hanging, soot laden and ugly; a dominating feature of the landscape in the vicinity."
Look at the pristine sides of those boxcars!
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