Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
Just downstream from Sprotbrough, the Trans Pennine Trail crosses the River Don on this former railway bridge.
While I wish I’d had better light, the riveted structure still manages to be an interesting subject, and the large format negative really captures the detail.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 4 March 2023.
This is another of those scenes that I’ve photographed on more than one occasion. The subject almost cries out to be photographed and the location features in the photographs of many others besides mine.
You can see an earlier picture here, when I walked the same path three years ago.
Some nicer light would have been good, but, hey – the UK…
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 3 March 2023.
I returned to work today following a week-and-a-day’s leave. The whole week I was off, the weather was dull and overcast, which kinda spoiled the days of photography I’d hoped for. I still went out and took pictures, but I knew the light was poor and they wouldn’t be what I might have hoped for.
Today, back at work and unable to venture out to take pictures, the weather has been lovely all day. Blue skies with smatterings of cumulus clouds and nice light. Sometimes it feels like I am being punished…
Here’s one of the pictures from last week, took while walking alongside the River Derwent in the Peak District near Calver.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 3 March 2023.
Crossing the River Derwent at Froggatt, this narrow stone bridge dates back to the 17th century.
On the day I took the picture it was difficult to find a spot to get an unobscured view, so I plumped for framing the slighly messy bush in the centre of the arch.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 3 March 2023.
One of the two photographs I took of the Botanical Gardens was a bit of a bust. The shot was alright but I got a big light leak on it. I suspect the leaks I sometimes get when shooting large format are caused by my taking insufficient care when removing the dark slide, perhaps pulling the film holder away from the camera slightly and letting light in.
Given the time and effort it takes to shoot large format (and the cost per sheet!) I decided to attempt to rescue the picture in Lightroom. I had to crop it by a not insignificant amount and then had to apply quite a lot of dehaze and spot editing to try and remove the worst effects of the light-leak. In the end though, I managed to salvage a reasonably useable image from the original. It’s not perfect – the contrast is a bit crunchy, resulting in some crushed blacks, and quite a lot of noise has been introduced, but better than no image at all.
It can’t be too bad – it managed to get into Flickr’s Explore pages somehow!
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 2 March 2023.
Continuing a theme from yesterday’s post, here’s another shot where my composition is out. In this shot I needed more of the foreground to avoid cropping the bench, and also more of the left hand side to avoid the edge of this part of the greenhouse being cropped. I should have moved further back, which would have solved both isssues.
Someone did point out that the loss of the left hand side of the frame could have been caused when inserting the film-holder, which could have accidentally caused the tripod head to rotate slightly if it wasn’t locked tight. It could easily have been my fault for not checking my edges carefully though.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 2 March 2023.
I took this picture a few weeks back on a quick trip out to shoot some sheets of film with my 4×5 camera. It was a bright day with plenty of light and, with a dark-cloth attached, I was able to see the image on the camera’s ground glass quite clearly. I still messed up the composition though.
Ideally I should have either taken a few steps back to get more of the scene into frame, or moved a little to the left (either physically or using some shift on the camera). This would have allowed me to get the whole grave marker on the left in frame, which I think would have improved the picture.
I still like the shot, and it’s impressive to see the amount of detail that the format can provide, but I do need to get better with my composition when using the ground glass.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken February 2023. (I can’t remember the specific date. I normally look at my Google Timeline to check such things but remeber that I forgot to take my phone out with me on this occasion so it didn’t record the trip).
Being eager to shoot more pictures with my 4×5 camera I visited this old school which I had passed by before.
Previously it was looking run down and somewhat bedraggled but, in the interim, it has been renovated and turned into homes (or maybe one big, fancy home). While this re-purposing of the old structure is good, from a photographic standpoint it doesn’t look half as interesting as it did before. Still, having driven up there I decided to make the shot anyway.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°
Taken February 2023. (I can’t remember the specific date. I normally look at my Google Timeline to check such things but remember that I forgot to take my phone out with me on this occasion so it didn’t record the trip).
Another couple of shots taken this week and then developed today. The good news is that I’m now fully confident that the light leak issues I had before are now resolved. The bad news is that I think I somehow managed to load these two sheets incorrectly. Not in a significant way, but negatives from both sides of the film holder indicate the the sheet wasn’t aligned properly and the photos are wonky as a result. You can see what I mean in this photo of the negs on my lightbox – if you look at the film border you can see how it’s out of whack:
I’m not sure how I managed to do this and, to be honest, I didn’t even realise it was possible! None of the other sheets I’ve loaded have suffered from this problem so I will have to keep an eye on things in the future. Sadly it means that the side-on picture of the church is spoiled as the wonky frame has chopped the top off the church – this is made worse when scanned as the border isn’t included in the scan.
The other image was retrievable though as I’d not framed the subject so tightly. The good news is that these were really just a couple of final test shots to make sure everything was working ok. I think I’ll make sure not to tightly frame my subjects for the time being though, just to be safe.
Here’s the shot that worked ok. If you click through to Flickr you can see that there’s a lot of detail.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 15 February 2023.
Following on from yesterday’s post about me testing my newly repaired 4×5 camera, here’s the second of the two photos I made while out. Again, this is nothing special, and mainly a test shot. It’s a little out of focus at the top of the frame, but otherwise ok. Had I spent more time I would have corrected the focusing.
I’ve photographed this willow tree on a number of occasions (see here, here, and here) and I think it would be a good subject for a more carefully considered large format shot if I pick the conditions right.
Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 14 February 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 