Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
A gate on the footpath I took when heading back towards Edale a couple of weeks back. I believe the peak you can see at the far left background is The Nab on the south-eastern edge of Kinder Scout.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Fomapan 100.
Taken on 26 April 2019
One of the cameras I picked up at a car-boot sale the other week was an Olympus OM-10. It came with a Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens (that was clean but faulty) and the manual adapter that plugs into the front of the camera to convert it, as you might expect, so that it can be used fully manually.
The light-seals looked like they’d seen better days – just a thin, plasticky coating remained in most cases – so I took the time to remove the old material and fit new seals. When that was done, there was nothing more than to take it out for a test.
Comparing it to my OM-1, the OM-10 feels somewhat flimsy. Not so much in its weight of the feel of the body, but the dials feel looser and far less well constructed than the other camera. Despite this slight misgiving, everything on the camera appears to work ok, and the roll came back from processing with no unexpected issues.
I’d used a Cimko 28mm f/2.8 lens that I bought from a chap on a forum a year or so back. The first results with the lens (on the OM-1) had been disappointing – most of the shots were soft compared to the Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 I also own – but having recently re-scanned some of the photos on the Plustek, it’s become apparent that it was my scanning that was to blame. The Plustek holders keep the negatives much flatter than my Epson V550 holders, and I think the original softness had been the result of slightly bowed negatives. As the Cimko has a nice “macro” mode, this is good to know as it gives me some additional flexibility in the shots I can take with my Olympus cameras.
The shot I’m sharing today is nice and sharp. I converted it to black and white in Lightroom as, although it was taken in some soft golden-hour light with a lovely warm glow, the mono image just has more punch to it, which I prefer.
Olympus OM-10, Cimko 28mm f/2.8 & Agfa Vista Plus 200 (converted to B&W in Lightroom).
Taken on 19 April 2019
This is probably a bit of an everyday type shot, but I liked the scene enough to press the shutter, and the Portra has captured the colours wonderfully. I don’t think it would work without that big white cloud though.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Kodak Portra 400.
Taken on 17 March 2019
A scene I’ve photographed before (not long after I first got the Yashica Mat, in fact). I’d hoped for a few more puddles in the road, but only got a trio of small ones in the shot. The dry road surface doesn’t make for a bad leading line though.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Kodak Portra 400.
Taken on 17 March 2019
This shot was taken a few minutes after the photo I published in my post from the 20th March. The earlier image was the last shot on the roll of Portra, and this was the first on the roll of Shanghai GP3. I’ve cropped this image to a 6×4.5 ratio as the upper part of the frame was just empty blue sky, which didn’t add much to the picture.
I *think* I prefer this B&W phot over the colour, but there’s not much in it really. I like them both a lot. The colour image is a little more abstract as it only features the ploughed field and sky.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Shanghai GP3.
Taken on 17 March 2019
A quickie post today, so here’s a photograph of a stile that I took during my walk this past weekend.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Shanghai GP3.
Taken on 31 March 2019
I went for a walk last Sunday, with no plan in mind other than to follow a public footpath on a map. This is something I like to do and aim to do more this year – I basically look for a public footpath on an Ordnance Survey map and then follow it. Hopefully I’ll find a few nice photos on the way and, if I don’t, it’s still exercise.
The path I followed last Sunday went around a small grass airstrip that I had no idea was even there before spotting it on the map. The map seemed to indicate that there was passage across the strip, but the reality was that it was bordered by electric fencing, the reason for this precaution probably being the subjects of today’s photograph.
I’m slightly wary of cows after reading of a number of injuries and even deaths caused by these normally peaceful creatures (although, in most cases the victim had a dog with them at the time, which is likely the reason the cows became hostile). I also became trapped in a field as darkness fell by a sizeable herd not too long ago when they wandered to graze right next to the only point of exit while I was taking a photograph elsewhere in the meadow.
Whatever my fears though, unfounded or not, this group were content to munch on the grass as I passed them by at a safe distance.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 & Arista Edu 200.
Taken on 31 March 2019
I went for a drive to find something to shoot the last few frames of a roll of Portra I had in the Yashica Mat. As I rounded a bend on a country lane, the sunlight on this ploughed field caught my eye.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Kodak Portra 400.
Taken on 17 March 2019
Another photo from the Canon Sure Shot Telemax, although this time I do recall taking the shot. A good job really, given that I only took it a few weeks ago.
I thought the composition was a good one when I made the photograph, but again I’m very pleased with the way the little compact has handled the scene. I’d used up the roll of film in my F80 when I took this, and would have missed the shot if I’d not had the Telemax in my pocket.
Canon Sure Shot Telemax & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 20 February 2019
I like to carry a compact film camera with me wherever I go, and so tend to keep one in my coat pocket at all time. This does mean that the habit tends to fall off somewhat in the warmer months when I don’t have a handy pocket, but through late autumn to early spring I’ve usually got a camera on me.
The camera of choice for quite a while now has been a Canon Sure Shot Telemax point-and-shoot compact, a camera that has the distinction of being the only film camera that I’ve owned since new. It was a gift from my parents nearly thirty years ago and sat unused in a drawer for the best part of two decades until I got back into shooting film a couple of years ago and I decided to see if it still worked. Despite the battery cover being held shut with tape, it whirred into life with a new battery, so I gave it a go. To say I was pleased with the results would be an understatement – while the camera is far from sophisticated, it produces very nice photographs indeed, and it’s been a constant companion for spur of the moment photo opportunities ever since.
Because of the nature of having it in my pocket much of the time, it means it’s with me even on occasions where I go out to shoot with a different camera, and it also means that it can take a while to finish a roll of film, leading to me forgetting what shots I’ve taken with it and getting an extra bit of anticipatory pleasure when getting the roll processed.
Which leads me to todays post. I finally finished a roll of HP5+ that has been in the camera since last October, and got it processed on Friday and then scanned today. I only got 33 shots for some reason – I vaguely remember perhaps mis-loading the camera and so lost a few frames that way – but happily a great deal of them are keepers (to my own standards, if not anyone else’s, at least).
This shot was taken on a foggy day when I went out with my DSLR last year, and I completely forgot taking any shots with the Telemax, so this was a nice surprise. It’s almost the same composition as a shot I took digitally, except this was handheld, and that was on a tripod. Despite the added detail in the digital version, I might be erring towards preferring the film shot.
Canon Sure Shot Telemax & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 25 November 2018
Steel City Snapper photography 