35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
This chap was having a sly forty-winks in the bookshop right next to where the photo books are. I’m not sure how asleep he actually was because he opened half an eyelid when I first walked past him, but then, sensing no threat, he let his guard down again, so I pounced and took the shot!.
Thankfully the 35 RC just makes a quiet click when the shutter fires. I’m not sure I’d have taken it had I been carrying an SLR or something. 🙂
Olympus 35 RC & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 21 July 2019
If you look at today’s photo carefully you will see that the kindly (or scary, depending on your disposition) looking plastic butcher is actually holding something in his right hand. It’s mostly concealed by the sheet listing the prices for some of the sandwiches on offer, but is, in fact, a meat cleaver.
It’s an innocent enough thing for a butcher (artificial or otherwise) to be carrying – it is, after all – a tool of the trade. So it’s probably just me, and a diet of horror / slasher movies during the 1980s, that provokes all manner of dark imaginings whenever I see it. The cleaver doesn’t have blood stains, at least it didn’t last time I passed when it was visible, but who knows why he’s carefully hiding it from view? Best not get too close…
Boo!
Olympus 35 RC & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 21 July 2019
When thinking of a title for the picture shown today, I was forced to find the answer to that age-old question that has puzzled our species for so long: Is it wheat, or is it barley?
Turns out it’s barley. The main visual differentiator, so I’ve learned today, is that barley has a long beard (the bristles that protect the kernels). So there you have it.
Anyway, here’s a photo of some wheat barley.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 20 July 2019
Back in January 2018 I took this photo. I liked the location, and the area it was taken (the Moss Valley to the southeast of Sheffield) is a very pleasant agricultural area criss-crossed with footpaths and narrow lanes, and dotted with pockets of woodland. Although I’ve re-visited the Moss Valley a few times since then – albeit not as often as I’d have liked – I’ve not returned to the place where the linked photograph was taken until this weekend just gone.
Today’s photograph was taken on the same footpath as that shot, although just a little further down the hill. The main difference between the pictures is the height of the crops in the field through which the footpath cuts. In the previous shot the field shows nothing but early signs of growth, while in the recent shot, the crop (I believe that it’s Oilseed Rape) is almost ready for harvest. Had I ventured here a couple of months ago it would have been in full bloom and presented itself as a sea of vibrant yellow. Maybe I’ll return for that next year.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 20 July 2019
Yesterday’s photo had the Grand Hotel in the background and here it is again, albeit much closer this time, providing the brick backdrop to the funicular station.
The funicular railway here was built almost 15 years after the hotel, opening to passengers in 1881, and it still serves residents and visitors to this day. There were originally a total of five funicular railways at the resort, but there are only two still in service today: the one here (the Central Tramway), and another on the south cliffs (aptly named the South Cliff Lift). Another between these two (the Saint Nicholas Cliff Lift, just the other side of the Grand Hotel) is still in place, but the bottom station is now an ice-cream parlour while the two carriages are fixed in place at the top of the incline and make up the Saint Nicholas Cafe.
The other two were in the North Bay area of the town. The North Bay Cliff Lift was closed in 1996 and has been dismantled and placed in storage, while the Queen’s Parade Cliff Lift appears to have had a somewhat ill-fated lifespan, being subject to runaway cars, accidents and mechanical failures until a landslide eventually caused it to close for good in 1887, just nine years after it opened.
There are various meandering pathways to and from the seafront for those who don’t wish to ride in style (or some seriously imposing sets of steps for those of a sturdy disposition!).
Pentax Espio 140M & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 13 July 2019
Following on from yesterday’s photo of the lobster pots, here’s the same location from a different point of view – this time a little further north up the shore. This was taken on a roll of Colorplus that was in the camera before I switched over to the Superia 100 that I used for yesterday’s shot.
I don’t live particularly close to the coast (although that’s probably not saying that much in the UK where it’s never more than about 70 miles to the sea (as the crow flies at least), so enjoy grabbing photos when I get the chance to visit.
The large building at the upper left of the frame is the Grand Hotel which, when it opened in 1867 was the largest in Europe. When viewed from above, it can be seen to be in the shape of a letter V, a tribute to Queen Victoria.
Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).
Taken on 13 July 2019
There are heaps of lobster and crab pots on the harbour side at Scarborough (as, no doubt, there are at many fishing towns and villages around the British coast). There are probably a uncountable number of shots to take of these devices on any given day – the geometry of ropes, the rust of the metal, the tangles of seaweed, and the crusts of barnacles mean that there is no shortage of interest there for the inquisitive eye. You do, obviously, have to put up the a strong fishy smell in order to get your shot, but that just enhances the atmosphere (both literally and figuratively) and puts you in a proper frame of mind.
Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).
Taken on 13 July 2019
Ok, so you’d be unlikely to see The Hoff or Pamela Anderson here in Scarborough, even twenty-five years ago, but it’s all the same thing really, isn’t it? Well, maybe without the L.A. glamour, hot weather, and crime-fighting shenanigans.
Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).
Taken on 13 July 2019
The Pentax Espio 140M that I bought for the princely sum of £1 at the steam rally the other week seems to work ok. It’s sharp (although maybe not quite as sharp as the Canon Sure Shot’s I own), and is very compact. The lens still seems pretty decent even when zoomed, and it has a range of metering and focussing modes that neither of my Sure Shot’s have.
It also has a panorama mode. At last, I can get those Hasselblad X-Pan type shots I always dreamed of. Well, kinda. Panorama mode here, like many other 35mm compacts with the feature, is actually achieved by way of a mask that blocks part of the frame, so all you’re really getting is a standard 35mm shot but with big black bars obscuring the top and bottom of the image. The same mask is visible in the viewfinder when the setting is activated, which does make composing the shots straightforward.
While it won’t give the resolution that an X-Pan (or a medium format camera with 35mm back) will provide, the results aren’t too bad, even if they could easily be achieved with any other camera by just cropping your image.
So, without further ado, here are four panoramas taken with the camera. Can you guess which two are actually just crops of a full 35mm frame done in Lightroom because I’d badly composed the images in-camera? 🙂
Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).
Taken on 13 July 2019
Inside the Maremagnum shopping mall at Barcelona marina were this pair of Ferrari’s. I don’t have a great deal of interest in cars, but they often make for great photographic subject matter and I liked the colour and light so took the picture. It was amusing to see just how many men took selfies or got someone else to take their photo in front of the cars. This included me too, as my wife took a shot of me on her phone. 🙂
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Portra 400.
Taken on 18 June 2019
