Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
The last of Lomography Color Negative 800 images that I converted to black and white (the one’s I’m going to post, at least).
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC / Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC & Lomography Color Negative 800. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro. Converted to B&W in Lightroom.
Taken 30 November 2025.
Gainsborough Old Hall began as a 15th‑century manor built by Sir Thomas Burgh II before later passing to the Hickman family, who modernised. Over the following centuries it fragmented into workshops, tenements, civic spaces and even a theatre, before falling into decline. Restoration efforts in the mid‑20th century ultimately saved it, and it now survives as one of England’s best‑preserved medieval manor houses, owned by English Heritage.
I’ve been inside on a previous visit, back when I had a one year English Heritage membership, but this time I just took a few pictures of the exterior.
Again, these are Lomography Color Negative 800 images that I’ve converted to black and white.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC / Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC & Lomography Color Negative 800. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro. Converted to B&W in Lightroom.
Taken 30 November 2025.
Standing beside the river Trent on its east bank, this statue is named The Pilgrim Woman.
On 10 May 1608, a group of Separatists, mostly women and children, escaped Gainsborough to find religious freedom. They left town along the River Trent on a small barge called The Francis, heading for Stallingborough near Immingham. Their plan was to meet a bigger ship there that would take them to Amsterdam in Holland where they would be able to worship freely. A few years later in 1620, they traveled on to America aboard the Mayflower.
Although not visible in my picture, the plinth upon which the statue stands is engraved: “Steering our Future Informed by Our Past“.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC / Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC & Lomography Color Negative 800. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro. Converted to B&W in Lightroom.
Taken 30 November 2025.
Another food production factory in Gainsborough, this time the AB Mauri (former Rank Hovis McDougall) works.
Beyond lie rows of terraced houses, and the spire of the Trinity Arts Centre (which resides in a Grade II listed former church , hence the spire).
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC / Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC & Lomography Color Negative 800. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro. Converted to B&W in Lightroom.
Taken 30 November 2025.
This is the view south where the River Trent flows through the town of Gainsborough, looking onto the Kerry food manufacturing plant and then, a few miles further upstream, West Burton power station.
While I wasn’t satisfied with the colours I achieved with the Lomography Color Negative 800, the film has quite a fine grain structure – at least in this 120 format – and it’s produced some quite nice B7W conversions.
This frame is not only converted to black and white, but also cropped.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC / Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC & Lomography Color Negative 800. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro. Converted to B&W in Lightroom.
Taken 30 November 2025.
Back to a run of photos I took in Gainsborough towards the end of last year. These were shot on a roll of Lomography Color Negative 800 – the first time I’ve shot this stock.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t all that pleased with the results. Part of this is down to me, or rather to my light meter, which I had inadvertently switched to it’s cine mode somehow, resulting in poorly exposed photographs. But I’m also not that happy with the colours I got.
Again, this might be down to the exposures in some cases,but I don’t think all frames were affected. It’s also hands down the worst film I’ve ever had to scan. The base is quite thin and it had a very pronounced curve to it that made it extremely frustrating to scan with my flatbed. This fact, more than any of the others, has put me off shooting it again (and I still have a couple of rolls in the freezer!).
The picture below is the only that I’ve left as a colour scan – I like the warm morning light on this closed up shop window. All the rest of usable frames I’ve converted to black and white, and I’ll post some of those in the next few days.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC / Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC & Lomography Color Negative 800. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 30 November 2025.
What a coincidence, eh? 🙂
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4. 11.5 mins @ 20°
Taken 30 November 2025.
I’m not sure just how “classic” these two cars are, but they’re certainly old.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4. 11.5 mins @ 20°
Taken 30 November 2025.
I’ve noticed this pair of semi-detached houses before and the seems to be a definite droop as though both halves are sinking away from the centre. I wonder it the effect is replicated inside?
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4. 11.5 mins @ 20°
Taken 30 November 2025.
I visited the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough back at the end of November and shot a couple of rolls of film through my Bronica ETRSi. Things didn’t go to plan and I was beset by a number of problems.
The first roll I shot was some Lomography Color Negative 800. I shot the full roll without noticing any issues (at the time), before loading a roll of Kentmere 400, and it was then that the issues made themselves known. The first was a problem with my light meter, a Sekonic L308s. It was working ok and measuring the light, but I realised after a while that the reading were a little weird and discovered that, to my dismay, that I’d somehow put the meter into cine mode. I’ve no idea how I did this, and it took quite a bit of Googling to find out how to revert it back to stills metering. By this time I’d shot the whole roll of Lomo 800, plus half of the Kentmere, without knowing how long the meter had been out.
It was shortly afterwards that I realised the second, more significant problem… I’d got the dark-slide still inserted in the Bronica! Now, this shouldn’t be a problem as the camera shouldn’t fire if the dark-slide is present but somehow the camera had been firing away without a care in the world, wasting almost half the roll of Kentmere!
I rectified the issue by removing the dark-slide and shot the rest of the roll (correctly metered this time), but I wonder if there’s some sort of fault present (or if I’d managed to somehow bypass the safety feature by ham-fisted means).
The picture shared here today of a tree casting it’s shadow on the side of this house was taken twice, once to no avail because of the above problem, and then this second attempt. I’m glad I returned to the scene as it’s probably the best shot of the day.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4. 11.5 mins @ 20°
Taken 30 November 2025.
Steel City Snapper photography 