Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Returning to old paths

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.

FILM - We've been here before

Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+.

Taken on 20 July 2019

35mm · Film photography · Photography

The house at the bottom

There’s an impressive flight of steps that descends the side of the hill down to the road where this house stands. I didn’t venture down them on this instance though, just took this shot before the roll of film ran out. As it was the final frame, there was some damage to part of the negative and so it’s been cropped to a square format. The light wasn’t great and I shot this wide open, which has resulted in a nice effect from the resulting shallow depth of field on the foreground.

FILM - The house at the bottom

Nikon F70, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D & Ilford HP5+.

Taken on 9 March 2018

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Oddshots #3

This has come rather closer to the last Oddshots posting than I expected, but as I haven’t gotten around to writing about the roll of Ektar I shot on Tuesday as yet, I thought I’d drop this in to keep up the flow of posts (I promised myself I would update the blog at least once a week, but seem to have gotten into a faster pace, so I may as well keep it up while I have stuff to show).

So, today’s oddshot was taken back in January this year with my Olympus OM-1. I’d bought a roll of Rollei Retro 400s film after being impressed by the results I’d seen produced by other people, so I loaded it up and off I went on a somewhat misty and gloomy winter’s day. What I’d not considered however, was the double whammy facts that, 1) Rollei Retro 400s is better shot at 200 ASA rather than box speed (at least according to most of the reports I looked at after I’d shot my roll) and, 2) that my OM-1 meter was out by about a stop due to it containing a 1.5v battery rather than the 1.35v it was expecting. I thought I was compensating for this by the meter needle placement, but I was clearly out by some margin (I’ve since had the camera modified to meter correctly with a 1.5v cell). The result of this was that the entire roll came out pretty significantly underexposed.

While some of the shots were write-offs, thanks to film being film, I was still able to rescue a good percentage of the photos. They’re all still underexposed, but in a way that I wasn’t unhappy with, and which rather suited the murky day on which they were shot. The picture below is an example of this. While’s it’s pretty dark, I really think that it’s added some atmosphere that might otherwise not have been there and resulted in a photo I like a lot. I’ll maybe post others from the same set in future.

FILM - On bleak winter days