Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
Often, especially later in the day, calm water becomes disturbed by ripples as a breeze rises, or people begin to make use of the facilities. Early in the morning, when the water is still, is when you get the nice reflections.
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Fujifilm Superia X-tra 400. Lab Developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 February 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).
I commented someplace before that I will photograph pretty much anything, it doesn’t really matter what the subject is just as long as it calls out to me that “Hey, look. There’s a photo to be had!“. Anything from picturesque landscapes to, well, cigarette ends. To paraphrase Garry Winogrand – I photograph things because I want to see what they look like when photographed.
Here is a case in point. It’s a couple of vegetable oil cans repurposed as ashtrays near a bar / restaurant. There was something about the scene that grabbed my attention though. I think it’s a combination of the colourful cans against the drab colours of the wall and floor. the contrasty geometric lines of the graffiti, and – of course – the light (I probably wouldn’t have taken the picture without this last factor).
It’s probably not the sort of subject matter that many photographers would choose, but I like to think there’s room for all types of pictures – there are only so many picturesque landscapes you can look at before craving an ash-filled cooking oil can, right? Right?
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Fujifilm Superia X-tra 400. Lab Developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 February 2023.
Today’s picture is another that would have fit well in my post about converging verticals that I published a couple of days back. It’s another image where the converging lines work well to produce a sense of scale in the composition, the buildings towering over the viewer (and the people in the scene) even though they are relatively low-rise structures.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 50mm f/2.8 MC & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 5 February 2023.
I posted last week about my ill-fated attempt to photograph some light-trails for a photo competition entry. The following evening I made a second attempt and, thanks to removing the dark-slide this time, this one was successful. I made three exposures and like the one here the best (the first two are very similar to one-another, but you can’t see the mororway snaking into the distance as well as you can on this one).
I exposed the film for 8 seconds at f/22. I used a digital camera to meter the scene which gave me a 4 second exposure, but I had to factor in some reciprocity failure for the HP5+. I calculated it as requiring 6 seconds, but the ETRSi only had 4sec or 8sec setting, so I erred for the longer exposure and it seems to have worked pretty well.
If I’d had enought time to get ist developed before the competition closing date I’d have used colour film instead, which would have been much more effective, but beggars can’t be choosers and I’m pretty happy with the results I got in the end.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°
Taken 24 February 2023.
