Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
I posted some pictures the museum and bandstand a few weeks back, but those shots were in black and white and shot on my Fujica STX-1. But I also took some medium format colour pictures of the same scenes (though different compositions) with my 1950s Zeiss folder. So here they are.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 6 September 2025
Weston Park Museum first opened 150 years ago, originally in Weston House before the building was extended with a neoclassical design. The building houses both the museum and the Mappin Art Gallery (named after a Rotherham businessman who bequeathed his collection to the gallery).
The gallery was partially destroyed during the Sheffield Blitz in WW2 and, while the museum remained open to the public through the 50s and 60s, the art gallery was not reopened until 1965.
The Weston Park bandstand is the last surviving bandstand in the city and was built in 1900.
These pictures, and those to follow in the coming days, were all taken with the Fujica STX-1 that I bought on a whim as part of a job-lot of not-working cameras from eBay.
Fujica STX-1 & X-Fujinon 50mm f/1.9 FM on Agfa APX 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 6 September 2025
The coming days will see a series of photographs made with my recently acquired Olympus OM-1N (a replacement for my faulty OM-1. You can read about how I came about it here, should you wish).
The camera appeared to be in full working condition, but needed new light seals, so this was its first outing after I’d replaced those. As I didn’t want to chance a roll of something expensive on an untested camera, and as I have no cheap bought-for-£1 Agfa Vista Plus left, I used the cheapest, but fresh, stuff I had to hand – some Agfa APX 100. As far as I’m aware this is just re-branded Kentmere 100 these days (although I think it used to be re-branded Fomapan 100 previously). The last time I shot some of this I developed it with Ilfotec DD-X and got some quite overdeveloped negatives (probably my fault). This time I decided to use some Adox Adonal instead and got better results.
My old OM-1 had been converted to meter properly with a 1.5v cell, but this OM-1N still expects a 1.3v cell. I do have Wein cell that I could use but, again, as the camera was untested I didn’t want to crack open an expensive battery so I used a 1.4v zinc-air battery instead. I’m not sure how much this will have affected the metering but, on the whole, the shots came out quite well exposed with perhaps a little over-exposure present. The good news is that the camera worked perfectly.
Posted here today are three shots from the start of the roll. More to come this week.
Olympus OM-1N, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Agfa APX 100. Adox Adonal 1+25 6mins @ 20°.
Taken on 15 April 2022
I suffered a wet knee for the sake of getting today’s blog picture, but think it was worth the discomfort and the soft focus on the forground grass along with the faint glimmer of dew give a nice sense of depth to the image. I had some expectation that the photo might be marred by camera shake as I had to hold it slightly off the ground to get the composition I wanted and felt like I wasn’t holding it completely steady, but it turned out nice and sharp. TLR’s – the flippy screens of their day!
Yashicamat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 16 April 2022
This is the bandstand at Elsecar. I’ve posted photos of the same location before here.
I’ve got a number of pictures of bandstands – they’re an attractive subject – and yet not a single shot with an actual band playing in them.
Fujica GW690 & Ilford FP4+. Lab developed in Xtol.
Taken on 20 February 2022
Two bandstands, both in Queen’s Park, Chesterfield – the same place I photographed the cricket field. At least I think they’re both bandstands – the second one is much larger and almost looks like a carousel with nothing to ride.
Perhaps in summer
The sound of a band may sound
Tiddly om pom pom
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 25 April 2021
Early last month, on a bright sunny day, I took a walk around Weston Park, Crookes Vally Park, and the surrounding areas. I took my Yashica Mat 124G loaded with some Lomography Color Negative 100 film, and my Sure Shot Telemax containing some Kodak Gold (the results from which I’ve been posting here over the past week or so).
This was the first time I’ve used the 100asa Lomography Color Negative variant, although I’ve shot several rolls of the 400asa version and liked the results. As is my current process for medium format colour films, these have been home-scanned as linear tiff files with my V550 using Vuescan, and then converted to positives using the free Grain2Pixel Photoshop plug-in. I found that, while the initial conversions looked pretty good, I’ve still had to tweak them to get them looking “right” – or at least as “right” as my own eyes reckon they should be. Grain2Pixel is a very good piece of software, especially given it is free-of-charge, but I do find that I have to remove colour casts sometimes depending on the film I used. The scanner (Epson V550 for medium format / Plustek 8100 for 35mm) can also make a difference too.
Occasionally, certain frames from a roll produce very odd results – oftem at odds with the rest of the shots from the same roll. I tried using the trial version of Negative Lab Pro to compare with the Grain2Pixel results on some of these and it also went slightly crazy – with colour tones looking very odd. All the shots here today were pretty straightforward to deal with though.
Anyway, the three photos today are all from the Lomgraphy 100 roll, shot with the Yashica, and all three made in Weston Park (with the museum visible in the first, the bandstand in the second, and the nearby Univesity Arts Tower in the third). Autum was underway, but the trees still held onto most of their leaves and a good amount of green at this point.
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Grain2Pixel conversion.
Taken on 10 October 2020
I visited the town of Barnsley on Saturday. There are three photo exhibitions currently on show at the Barnsley Civic that I wanted to see. The one that attracted me initially was Broth Tarn, a collection of gritty northern street photography by Sean O’Connell. It was featured in The Guardian newspaper recently and looked to be right up my street. O’Connell has an Instagram feed that features his work here.
The other exhibitions were Barnsley Markets 1982 – 1987 featuring photographs by Harry Brooks taken in the 1980s of, you guesed it, Barnsley Markets, and North: Fashioning Identity which explores nothern identity and fashion which features work by many photographers, including Peter Mitchel and John Bulmer. While the latter exhibition wasn’t my prime reason for the visit, I very much enjoyed the experience (and took a few photos while exploring the photos and displays).
While I’ll likely be publishing some of these photos, this is pretext to today’s pictures which were taken later in the day when I stopped off at Elsecar Heritage Centre on my journey home. By this time, despite the lovely early morning sunlight at the start of my trip, a thick fog had descended across the entire region, and fog’s not something I like to miss if I get the chance, so I set off to get some more images before I headed home.
Across from the heritage centre is a park and Elsecar Reservoir, and in the park is a bandstand. I loved the way it looked in the fog, backed by misty skeletal trees and flanked by empty benches. I’m a Stephen King fan, and the scene evoked the bandstand in the fictional town of Castle Rock where a terrible event takes place in the novel The Dead Zone.
As well as the Zeiss, I also had the Holga with me and took further pictures with that, so they might turn up in a post in the coming days too.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 30 November 2019
Steel City Snapper photography 