Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
It’s nice to see that, even in a modern city, that there are still signs of its heritage if you keep your eyes peeled, such as these Grade II listed former cutlery and grinding workshops close to the centre of Sheffield.
Olympus Trip 35 & Agfa Vista Plus 200
Taken on 6 August 2017
Another snap, this time in my house, where I liked the light falling on this elephant-shaped watering can. Shot with my £2 Olympus Superzoom 105 G compact.
Olympus Superzoom 105 G & Fomapan 100
Taken in April 2017 (not sure of the exact date for this one, sorry).
Another shot I’ve recently re-scanned. This is Canning Dock in Liverpool, UK, which I visited last October.
Olympus 35 RC & Kodak Tmax 400.
Taken on 30 October 2016.
After seeing some lovely low-key film shots on a forum I’m a member of, I decided to go ahead and produce one myself. I’ve done low-key before, but mostly digital, and I tend to chicken out from crushing the blacks too much and end up bringing the detail back up. In the shot below, I went all-in, and a large chunk of the image is pure black.
It was an underexposed shot to begin with – the entire roll, despite being shot at box speed on a camera with a correctly working meter, came out thin, and with lots of speckles of dust-like marks. In fact, this is the second roll of Rollei film that I’ve had this issue with (the first being Rollei Retro 400s), although a roll of Superpan 200 in 120 roll format came out just fine). I don’t have any more at present, but think I will shoot it at half-box speed in future.
Anyway, back to the picture. Despite the flecks of white scattered across the image (I cleaned most of them up, honestly!) I think it works quite well.
Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Rollei Superpan 200.
Taken on 8 August 2017.
On a visit to Gainsborough Old Hall recently, I came across a small art exhibition running through some of the rooms. One of the objects was a vintage pocket watch with a small plastic doll squashed up inside it and entitled “Watch Case Infant”. Sadly, I can’t remember the meaning of the piece (and I’ve thoughtfully missed of the bit of the white card containing the text), but it makes for a pretty nice picture, I think.
Olympus OM-1, F. Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Rollei Superpan 200.
Taken on 8 August 2017.
I spotted this guy painting a (presumably commissioned) piece of artwork in Sheffield city centre while out on a walk last autumn. I also spotted a couple who had also spotted him.
Olympus 35 RC & Kentmere 400 film.
Taken on 23 October 2016.
A photo from a few weeks back when I went for a wander around a part of town I’ve not explored before. Although it was far from the golden-hour, the light was still nice and I spotted this tray of eggs in a closed sandwich-shop window, positioned in such a way as to be largely unaffected by the reflections obscuring the rest of the shop’s interior. It’s a bit of an odd shot, but one I was really pleased with.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Portra 160.
Taken on 29 July 2017.
It’ll be the 2017 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride in a few weeks’ time, so here are a few pics from last year’s event in Sheffield. This was the second outing from my (then) recently acquired Olympus 35 RC.
All shots: Olympus 35 RC & Kentmere 400 film.
Taken: 25 September 2016
A couple of photographs taken on a recent(ish) trip to Sheffield cathedral, when the venue was opened in the evening to a local photography group, enabling the use of (normally forbidden) tripods etc.
It’s the same subject in both shots, just from opposite sides.
Both shots: Yashica Mat 124 G & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 17 July 2017.
Earlier this year I bought three compact 35mm cameras for a couple of quid each at a camera fair. One of them was the Konica Pop with which I took the photos in today’s post.
The Pop is a pretty bare-bones machine. Essentially the only options you have are altering the film speed setting and deciding whether to manually use flash (it fires automatically if there’s low light, popping up from the top of the camera, hence – I suppose – the name). Mine, however, doesn’t do this as there were a couple of badly corroded batteries in it when I bought it and the electrics no-longer work.
However, after a bit of research, I discovered that it’s possible to shoot it manually using Sunny 16 type guidelines. The camera has a fixed 1/125sec shutter speed, and the lens is fixed focus (at 2.8 metres). The aperture though can be controlled by an odd combination of the film ASA setting and whether the flash is set in it’s up or down position and provides a decent set of apertures to use:
ASA 400 & Flash Down = f/16
ASA 200 & Flash Down = f/11
ASA 100 & Flash Down = f/8
ASA 200 & Flash Up = f/5.6
ASA 100 & Flash Up = f/4
It’s a bit ‘Heath Robinson’, but it works. Based on this, I decided to run a roll of film through it to see what I results I might get. Now, some of the shots were a little underexposed based on my misjudging the light, but on the whole they weren’t too bad, with the Hexanon f/4 lens being pretty decent.
So today’s post features a small selection of the better shots. All were shot on Agfa Vista Plus 200 film, a few of which I converted to black and white in Lightroom. I’ll get around to re-scanning them at some point and hopefully squeeze a bit of extra detail out of the negatives.
Of all of these, I think the shot of the curved building, and the bottom shot of the people on the railway platforms are my favourites.
