Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
A couple more photographs of the packhorse bridge at Ashford-in-the-Water today. I shared another photo of the bridge a couple of days ago and mentioned that the sheep paddock at one side of the bridge contained only ducks on this occasion. You can see a couple of them (well just the back-end of one) in the second picture.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford Delta 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°.
Taken on 19 April 2022
On the day that I visited Ashford-in-the-Water, I also drove up to Monsal Head, a scenic viewpoint which overlooks a stretch of Monsal Dale where the valley takes a sharp bend. As with Ashford, the River Wye flows through (and indeed, eroded) the dale here too, a few miles upstream from the village.
One of the main features of the valley is the disused Headstone Viaduct which used to carry the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midland Junction Railway. The line was open between 1863 and 1968. The route of the railway now forms the Monsal Trail, a popular route for hiking and cycling. The viaduct is 300 feet in length and 70 feet tall.
A little downstream from the viaduct a weir slows the flow of the river.
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 19 April 2022
I’m not actually sure if this stretch of canal has a name. It’s a navigable route that runs beside the River Don at Mexborough, presumably because the river itself is not suitable passage in this area. The canal diverts from the Don just upstream of Mexborough and then re-joins it further along, just before the River Dearne also merges with the flow.
I’d visited Mexborough because I believed therewas a camera store in town, but when I got there the address appeared to be closed. Not wanting to waste the trip I had a wander around and took a few photos. The three here today are all taken close to one another from the canal towpath.
Although all three shots have been converted with the same settings, the first has a different tonality to the others. I’m not sure if this is a factor of the Negative Lab Pro processing in some way, or if it’s down to the camera’s metering of the scene perhaps.
I like all three of the photographs, but they probably would have been much better on non-expired film.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D & TruPrint FG+ (expired 2005). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 2 April 2022
The photo in today’s post is a few years old – it was taken on a cold, but bright, February day back in 2018 on the edge of the moorland near Surprise View in the Peak District national park. I don’t think I’ve published this picture online anywhere before now.
I re-scanned it, and the rest of the photos on the roll, yesterday, using Vuescan to make a linear RAW DNG file and then Negative Lab Pro for the conversion in Lightroom.
Now I understand how to use NLP properly (or at least much better – there are still a bunch of controls and sliders that I stay away from!), I’m very pleased with the ease of getting colours that I’m happy with almost straight out of the box. I still tweak things a little, first using NLPs controls, and then maybe some minor tweaks in Lightroom itself (usually adding a little clarity and sharpness), but there has been none of the annoying mental gymnastics where I can’t decide if the colours are “off” in some hard to define way.
Obviously, colours are subjective, whether it be someone sat at home trying to get what they think Portra or whatever film stock they’ve used to look “right”, or a technician in a photo-lab making adjustments in the Noritsu software (or whatever it is they use) on the behalf of the photographer. So far, Negative Lab Pro has given me colours that feel correct with very little faff on my part, and for this I am thankful. I love black and white photography, but this new found ability to get results I’m happy with from C41 film is making me want to shoot more of the stuff (and re-scan some of the photos where I had less than satisfactory results in the past). It’s just a shame I need to sell a kidney to afford colour film these days!
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 7 February 2018
The view from North Landing near Flamborough. Although on the east coast of England, because it is on a promontory, this view is actually looking to the north. Setting off on a straight line from here would take you right over the top of the world without hitting land until you reached Wrangel Island, off the northern coast of the Russian mainland to the west of Alaska. It would be a long and arduous voyage for one of the small boats seen in this scene.
Olympus XA3 & Ilford Pan HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
I was struck by the way that the lighthouse looked like it stood beyond a rolling sea of grass in this photo. I did wonder about cloning out the lone figure on the left but then decided against it.
In other news, I’m currently scanning a roll of 135 Tri-X that I finished shooting at the weekend. As I often get drying marks on my 135 negatives (although, oddly, never on 120 negs…), even though I use distilled water and wetting agent for the final wash, I’ve taken to using a squeegee lately. This has worked fine all the other times I’ve used it, but this roll of Tri-X looks beset by scratches along most of its length, which is disappointing.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
It’s been a while since I posted a power-lines picture I think, so let me rectify that. If you’ve read this blog for a while you’ll perhaps realise that I find pylons and power lines an appealing choice of subject matter. Not to the extent that I go looking for them purposefully, but they often draw my eye. This pylon, stood like some metallic sentinel on the foggy and frosty Woodhouse Washlands certainly caught my attention.
I took myself off for a trip to the seaside today. I don’t often tend to go there on cold January days, but I figured that a change of scene would get my creative juices flowing (plus I could eat some fish and chips while looking out at the sea…). The day was sunny and bright, but bittely cold with chill winds – the remnants of storm Malik that was now headed east out to sea – so a hat, gloves and a fully zipped up jacket were a definite necessity. I’m feeling tired now, and ready to hit the shower when I finish typing this, but my belly is full of my fish and chip dinner, and I have two rolls of 35mm film to be developed, so the day counts as a success. The pictures will turn up here in a bit, although I’ve got two other rolls of stuff to root through before that happens. It’s nice to be back in the black again, photographically speaking.
Back to the usual routine of work tomorrow.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+ (pushed to 1600asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 13mins @ 20°
Taken on 15 January 2021
Beside one of the footpaths in Padley gorge stands the remains of a twisted tree. Little more of the trunk is left but it’s something of a focal point on the path as the wood is embedded with hundreds (or more) coins which have been hammered into the surface and bent over (or perhaps they were bent over before they were knocked in). The result is an odd and intriguing texture that resembles the scales of some beast, like a serpent or a dragon.
The effect is even more pronounced when viewed from the right point of view as the broken tip of the trunk resembles a horned face (or I think it does anyway). On this day it had a conifer branch leant against it giving it a slightly festive air given it was a couple of days before Christmas.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 50mm f/2.8 MC & Ilford Delta 3200. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9.5mins @ 20°
Taken on 23 December 2021
I’ve been out all day today and haven’t had chance to upload a photo to Flickr, and I now don’t have much time to write today’s blog post either (mostly because I’m hungry and my belly is demanding precedence…). It’s been a very foggy day today though, so I’ve dug out an old foggy day photo that I don’t think I’ve posted here before (I hope).
It was shot on a roll of Rollei Retro 400s which, despite me shooting it at the advertised box speed of 400asa, came out very underexposed. Some of the shots were pretty much ruined, but a few – like this one – I liked. This is the original scan from my V550 flatbed, so it’s a bit mushier than usual.
Olympus OM-1, Rollei Retro 400s. Lab developed in Xtol.
Taken sometime in 2016/17
This viewpoint of Bolsover castle is always striking to behold, I think, and there was clearly good reason to place the castle in this location given it’s commanding position above the valley below. The castle dates to the 12th century and was built by Henry II and further extended in the 15th and 16th centuries.
M1 motorway
Runs like a river below
Bolsover castle
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+ (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
Taken on 22 October 2021
