Oddshots #1

May 7, 2017 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Occasionally, I might have a single image to post, maybe something unusual or special, or just an oddment that’s slipped out of a set. Rather than saying nothing about them, I thought they might make for good “quickie” posts.

The shot here is one that was taken a few weeks ago, but which I’ve only just uploaded to Flickr (mainly because I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Yashica Mat). It was taken with a Pentax P30T and Rikenon 50mm f/2 lens combo on Agfa Vista Plus 200 – a film that can usually be bought for £1 a roll [24 exp] in the UK’s Poundland discount store chain. Poundland Agfa (as it seems to be known amongst some ‘togs) may be cheap, but I quite like the results it produces – a little grainy and edging towards the magenta, it can produce particularly nice results in sunny conditions, I think.

Because it’s so cheap, it makes a good ‘test’ film for new cameras that you don’t want to risk with something more expensive. In this case, it was the first outing for the P30T, a camera I’d bought purely because I had the Pentax K-mount Rikenon 50mm lying around without a body to affix it to. The lens came with a Ricoh KR-10 that I’d bought at a flea market, but the focusing screen was mis-aligned and beyond my current powers to fix. I still have the KR-10, but it seems to have slipped into further disrepair, with the shutter now failing to fire even with fresh batteries. Ah well, at least the lens seems ok.

I took the camera for a walk around town and shot all 24 frames of the Agfa, and was very happy with the results. The P30T (which I use in aperture priority mode), is compact, light, and fits well in my hands, and the images were all nicely sharp and well exposed.

The shot below is of the Soundhouse, a building owned by the University of Sheffield’s Department of Music. It’s an unusual building with a look of a piece of studded furniture. After a bit of tweaking, I decided to convert the shot to black and white as I preferred the look. Apart from a couple of scratches I’ve noticed on the image since uploading it (I might go back and fix those, so don’t worry if you can’t see them!), I like the shot. The building’s unusual shape and its black textured exterior make it stand out nicely in the frame. The composition is maybe a little tight at the bottom though. Oh well.

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Twelve frames an hour

May 5, 2017May 5, 2017 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

I’m still loving the Yashica Mat 124 G and, as I had a brief window of time before attending an appointment I’d taken the day off work for on Wednesday, I decided to go out. I only had around 90 minutes to spare, so didn’t venture far, but there’s a variety of footpaths and tracks in the area that would offer some opportunities for photographs, plus the weather was nice and bright which might make for some contrasty shadows even though the sun was riding fairly high by this time of the morning.

I decided to waste no time by walking to the area I planned on visiting and instead drove the car the mile or so to where I planned to start my walk. I parked up in a small lay-by close to the railway crossing – my first intended subject being the signal-box that stands beside the crossing. As I got there I though my luck was in as the alarm began to ring and the barriers descended indicating a train would shortly pass. I got my shot set up to feature the signal box at the right of the frame and the yet-to-arrive train on the left. Focus was nailed; composition was set; All I needed was the train to arrive. I waited. And waited. I noticed some curious looks from a lady in a car waiting at the crossing as she looked at the bloke staring into the top of the old-fashioned-looking camera. I waited some more and then, suddenly… the barriers raised. Bah! No train. It had not been my intention to shoot a passing train, but it would’ve been a nice addition to the picture had it arrived. Still, at least I got my shot (well, two of them actually) of the signal box.

I then walked up the small road that runs parallel to the railway tracks. This leads to a scrapyard, although it’s not really a scrapyard in the traditional sense of it being a load of old junked cars anymore. It used to be, and I remember hunting for and finding a replacement wing-mirror for my first car at the very same place about twenty-five years previously, but these days it’s more of a recycled metals place and I don’t think there are any junked cars there any more. A pity, as they would make for interesting photo opportunities. Still, I took my next shot on the lane – there was a distant electricity pylon rising between a couple of trees where the road curved up ahead, and that made for frame #3.

I’d intended the next shot to be of a footbridge spanning the railway lines, but there were a bunch of parked cars and vans next to the bridge that I felt spoiled the shot, so I instead turned my attention to the rows of waste-metal skips that are lined up outside the yard. I presume that these are dropped off from recycling depots and then returned later but, whatever the case, there a quite a number of them. I noticed three of the same design all in a row with some nice bright light on them, so that was shot #4.

Shot #5 was of another footbridge, this one spanning a second set of railway lines (the two set join a little farther up the valley) and I attempted to get a shallow depth of field shot focussed on the foot of the steps. Alas, even with a roll of Ilford FP4+ in the camera, the light was too bright to drop below f/8 at the camera’s maximum shutter speed of 1/500 sec. The shot’s still quite nice (in an industrial style) though.

At the other side of the bridge, the path forks. Straight ahead takes you to the country park, to the left the path crosses the Rother via a narrow passage on the stone railway bridge. At the edge of the bridge I noticed a fence overgrown with brambles and nettles and decided to make it #6. The #7 was a wide aperture shot of the near-side of the path across the bridge and #8 was the same path from the opposite side. A bit of stray vegetation got into the shot here and spoils this one a little, although I’d be lying if I were to claim it would’ve been great otherwise.

Shot #9 was of a cluster of directional signs poking from the undergrowth at the far side of the bridge. One of the signs looks to have had an encounter with fire at some point in its existence! Shots #10 & #11 were of the chain link fence the adjoins the right side of the path in my direction of travel – the other side is bordered by a more significant aluminium fence that separates the track from the set of railway lines.

At the end of the path I walked up the small rise that leads to the viaduct carrying the A57 across the valley (including the river and both sets of railway lines), but took the road back down into the village before getting to the pedestrian-free zone, looping me back to my start point.

I had one final frame remaining of the twelve and decided that a wooden gate in a field close to where I’d parked the car would make a decent final shot. I think the gate was shot at f/8.

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Another couple of outings with the Yashica Mat

May 3, 2017May 5, 2017 fishyfisharcade1 Comment

After being pretty pleased with the first set of results from my Yashica Mat 124 G, I was eager to get out and shoot some more. Given I had an extra roll of HP5 lying around, what was there to wait for?

So, a couple of days after getting the first roll back, I went out again with another twelve potential masterpieces waiting to be found. I’m not sure there are any masterpieces amongst the shots I got (well, I’m fairly confident there aren’t), but I was happy with the majority of them nontheless.

The first five shots were taken on an evening expedition after work on the 25th. After a bit of virtual-sightseeing on Google Streetview, I’d found a photogenic-looking tree on a country lane not too far from home, so I hopped in the car and drove to the location (not far from Harthill), The weather had consisted of sunshine and showers throughout the afternoon, and the situation had persisted into the early evening, so there were plenty of big clouds in the sky to add some interest to the shots, but with the downside that I would have to hide in the car should they decide to open up on my position (no surprises here, but they did).

The location was quite nice, and the showers had left a nice sheen of water on the lane running beside the tree. The fields on either side were full of oilseed rape in full bloom and were vivid with yellow flowers. Good job I had that black and white film in the camera, eh? I managed to get three shots before the rain came, and then waited in the car for a final shot after the shower had passed. The first shot was totally out of focus for no reason I could ascertain, but as the rest were fine, it’s probably attributable to camera shake or some other dumb user error.

I decided to drive on for the last shot of the evening, another lane just outside the pleasant little village of Thorpe Salvin. I’d seen the lane before, but not taken any shots, and while I quite like the result from this trip, the road was quite dry and I feel it might’ve benefited from a bit of water like the first location. There was also a pair of purple Calvin Klein underpants affixed to a barbed wire fence next to where I parked the car, but thankfully these were not in the way of my shot so I kept a safe distance from them. No idea what their particular story was!

A day later I decided to use the remaining 7 shots and took a drive past Eckington to the cluster of small hamlets in the hills beyond. I didn’t have any particular idea of what I was going to shoot, but felt that some opportunities might present themselves as I drove around.

The first shot was of a Give Way marker at a crossroads. Not the most obvious of subjects, but I’d seen a couple of examples of similar shots on The Online Darkroom blog that I liked the look of, and so decided to get my own take. I don’t think mine matches the quality of those taken by Bruce Robinson that it seeks to emulate, but it’s quite nice anyway and I was happy with the result.

The next shot was of a random piece of farm machinery I spotted in a field near Apperknowle (another shot that necessitated waiting out a rain shower in the car). Because of the TLR’s viewfinder and the proximity of a fence and foliage to my shooting position, I ended up cropping the shot to get rid of some distracting foreground objects that didn’t add anything to the shot. I’m not sure it’s great without them, but it has a pleasant vintage feel that I think can be a hallmark of medium format images.

The remaining shots were all taken at the same location in West Handley, where a traditional K6 red phone box stands beside the road. Behind the box was another rapeseed field, which made for a picture of the crop stems, and an anti-fracking notice on a telephone pole made for another.

Overall, I’m pleased with this second set from the camera. It’s still a learning experience, but one that’s a pleasure to undertake. Anyway, enough wittering, here are the shots:

The first two are of the tree near Harthill.

The next is the lane near Thorpe Salvin (and the underpants!).

Here’s the Give Way road marking shot:

And the farm machinery (not sure what it is exactly though – possibly some sort of generator / pump?):

And finally, the shots from West Handley:

Photography

Yashica Mat 124 G

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

I already own one medium format camera in the shape of a Lubitel 166 Universal. My reasons for buying it were primarily based on economics – Lubitels can be had in good condition for around £30-50 ish – but also because, despite their relatively lo-fi build and feature set, they are capable of pretty nice results if you put in the effort. This effort, in my case at least, comes mostly in the shape of squinting very hard into the small magnifying loupe while trying to determine if the image in the dim circle of ground glass is actually in focus or not, coupled with the fact that the waist level viewfinder has to be viewed at quite a specific angle to avoid reflections of the inside of the camera which can make composing your shot (already tricky to those not used to the reversed image) an additional hurdle. What this means in practice is that I tend to chicken out of any close focus shots and just set the thing to infinity and not worry about it beyond a slightly depressing realisation that I’m missing out on some nice shallow depth of field images that medium format can do so nicely. Still, despite thes shortcomings, I’ve managed to get some decent shots out of the 166 U, and they are extremely sharp if time is taken to get things right.

Nontheless, I had a hankering for something with a bit more umph and a bit less of a thermo-plasticky feel to it, so for the past few months I’ve been weighing up a likely replacement – ostensibly as a birthday present. I had a budget of up to £250 in mind which, while ruling out a lot of the Rolleiflexes and Hassleblads and the like, still left a reasonable amount of decent cameras to choose from, and the main decision was around format – TLR or SLR.

While I like the idea of MF SLRs for thir handling, they do tend to have a dwnside when it comes to form factor unless you’re happy to just stick with a waist level finder (which then removes a lot of the handling benefits). A Bronica ETRS becomes a much bigger machine once a grip and prism finder is attached for instance, So, having been quite happy with the 6×6 squares produced by my Lubitel, I decided a TLR was probably the way to go – smaller, lighter, and without the “1980s VHS camcorder” look that some MF SLRs can get when fully kitted out. Again, there were still a number of options – Yashica’s Rolleicords, Autocords, Mamiya C330s etc. – but my decision was mostly made when I spotted a Yashica Mat 124 G in good condition for a fair price on Gumtree. After a bit of umming & ahhing and some questions to the seller, I decided to go for it.

It’s in a different league when compared with the Lubitel. It feels solid and weighty, the focussing is smooth and easy to determine in the viewfinder. The loupe is massive in comparison, and the controls are much simpler to use. The camera is in very nice condition, but didn’t have a lens cap, so I ordered a third part cap from eBay (which, when it arrived, turned out is a pretty poor fit, but it at least stays on the camera and hasn’t fallen off by itself so far), plus a lens hood as I’d heard that the camera could be susceptible to flare.Still, despite not having the protection of either, I was itching to try the camera out so, as the weather was quite dull, I loaded up a roll of 400 ASA HP5+. I was a little unsure of how to wind the film on to the first frame – this is a completely manual process in my Lubitel, so I did something similar wuth the Yashica – stopping winding when I saw the “1” in the frame-counter window. My frst shot was a boring, “itchy trigger finger” shot of the empty HP5 box on the windowsill. I lined up the shot, got the focus dialled in and fired the shutter. I then wound on, but the lever stopped after about an inch, forcing me to back-wind and re-cock the shutter. It appeared that my method of loading the film had been incorrect. I then took a shot of one of my kids. This time the lever advanced as expected, but I was doubtful as to how the shot would emerge, now expcting a double exposure of some sort (this is exactly what I got – a shot of one of my sons superimposed on some vertical blinds).

After my hasty first shot, I decided to venture out. I didn’t have any particular location in mind for my test, but as I had some chores to run, I decided to take a few shots around Handsworth church after dropping some curtains off at the dry cleaners. The sun was showing signs of emerging between the clouds and I fired off five shots in the churchyard while getting used to the handling and then returned to the car. I then decided to have a run up to Penny Hill wind-farm and maybe get some shots of the turbines. The route to the wind-farm takes you on a narrow, high-sided country lane through the village of Ulley, and I stopped off there to take a few more shots at Ulley church. By now the clouds had dissipated quite a lot and I was forced to use narrower apertures and faster shutter speeds to compensate, so one or two of my shots look busier than I’d have liked as I couldn’t isolate the subjects as much as I wanted to. As a result, one of the shots (a small gravestone amongst some ivy) was pretty much a write-off. Still, I was hopeful for some of the others – even if I had little hopes of anything breathtaking.

After the church I had two shots remaining, so moved on to the wind-farm and finished the roll.

As I don’t currently develop my own film, the rest of the weekend passed with an urge for Monday to come around (wishing the weekend away like a fool!) so I could drop the roll off at the lab. Anyway, long story short – film dropped off on Monday morning, picked up and scanned by Monday evening,

As to the results, well those can be seen below. While I’m not massively satisfied with them in terms of interest (shots 4, 6, 7, 8 & 9 are my favourites from the roll), I am very encouraged by the quality. There’s tons of detail and the focus is largely right on the mark and I’m now very much looking forward to putting another roll through the camera.

1: The first shot (not counting the double-exposuere debacle). I wish I’d have been able to use a wider aperture for this, but the sun came out and I could’t be bothered to wait for it to go back in again!

2: The sun was still out and lighting the side of the church, but it stood out nicely against the darker clouds in the sky to the rear.

3: Another shot which would’ve benefitted a wider aperture and shallower DOF perhaps?

4: Another shot of St. Mary’s steeple.

5: The war memorial at Ulley. The light was a little bright, but the highlights are still intact.

6: Just up the road from the memorial these gravestones are just over the wall in the churchyard.

7: These red and white vestements on a wooden cross made for quite a nice subject I thought. I think the sunlight helps.

8: Tucked around the back of the church is this stone crucifix. As thei area was shaded by the church I was able to open up the aperture a little more. Not enough to throw the background out of focus, but I wuite like the shot and the figure of Jesus is nice and sharp.

9: There seems to be a feint streak on the negative here, but this is probably my favourite shot from the roll. One of the turbines at Penny Hill wind-farm. The busy M1 / M18 junction is about 100 metres to the right of this location.

10: Another couple of turbines, this time looking south and taken from the same location as the previous shot.

Film photography · Photography

First light

April 25, 2017May 5, 2017 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

This is not my first blog. Oh no. I have started several, only to see them gradually wither on the vine due to inactivity, lack of time, or just a dearth of enthusiasm on my part. Will this one suffer the same fate? We shall see.

This blog is likely to be predominantly about photography, a subject I’ve been interested over a span of many years, although not always without significant breaks in activity, and by no means in any professional capacity. A couple of years ago, I decided to scratch the shutterbug itch that had been gnawing away at me for a while by buying a DSLR camera – something I’d wanted in the past but had never had the money for (or, at times, enough desire for the purchase), and since then the itch has done nothing but intensify. In the two years since acquiring that camera I’ve taken more than double the number of photographs that I’d taken in the preceding TEN years! Not only that, but my understanding of photography has grown at a similarly accelerated rate, taking onboard all manner of technical and artistic considerations that I hadn’t considered (or ignored!) in the past.

Over the past year, a new itch developed, secondary to the first: Film.

I’m approaching my half century now, so I’m no stranger to the use of film, but I am new to using it properly. That is, taking care to understand that there’s more to a photograph than pointing the lens at something and pressing the shutter button. My early use of film was, I assume, akin to that of most people – the camera was a device that you took snapshots with while on holiday, or at birthdays and Christmas etc. Composition was an unknown country, as was light and exposure. As a result, the majority of my photographs from my earlier days featured the usual suspects that blight many a snapshot: people stuck bang-centre in the frame; boring landscapes that looked great in person, but were rendered flat and lifeless by no points of interest in the shot; out of focus friends and family outside the bounds of the lens’ focussing capabilities; white-faced and red-eyed folks blinded by a burst of dazzling pop-up flash, animals that looked exciting in the flesh, but which are rendered as vague blobs of fluff in an acre of foliage because you used a 35mm lens to photograph a rabbit from 50 metres away. … You get the gist, yeah?

So, on that note, many of the posts on here will be about my adventures with film photography. Soaking up the way it looks and, just as importantly, the way it feels to shoot. Digital is taking a bit of a back seat at the moment, although that doesn’t mean I won’t sneak something in every now and then – most likely macro stuff.

So, let’s hope this isn’t the first AND last post of this blog.