Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
Another set of Holga 120N pictures to follow on from yesterday’s blog post. They include two views of the pavillion in Endcliffe Park, the Trinity United Reform Church (a brutalist design just across the road from the park), and a climbing frame in the middle of the park.
Holga 120N & Fomapan 100. Adox Adonal 1+25 4mins @ 20°.
Taken on 10 April 2022
On the day I tried out my first roll of the new Kodak Gold 120 variant, shot with my Yashicamat, I also took the Holga with me. I still had a couple of rolls of the “bad batch” Fomapan 100 (the one that liberally sprinkles little white specks on the resulting pictures), and it seems a good fit to shoot it with the Holga as, while I don’t want to use faulty film with the camera, it is great at covering up such defects due to its uniquely rendered images. I also have quite a stash of film at present and aim to try and get through some of it this year.
This was the first time I’d used the Holga in over a year – the last time was for some snowy shots back in January 2021 – and it’s easy to forget how much I like the pictures it produces. While this roll didn’t produce twelve bangers, I still got several I was happy with, and so I’ll post them here today and tomorrow.
I developed the roll in some of my remaining trial bottle of Adox Adonal (Rodinal in all but name) and used a 1+24 dilution which gave a pleasingly short 4 minute developing time. I’m pretty happy with the way they’ve turned out.
Holga 120N & Fomapan 100. Adox Adonal 1+25 4mins @ 20°.
Taken on 10 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
I suspect, like many people, I was pleasantly surprised when Kodak recently revealed the re-introduction of it’s Kodak Gold emulsion in 120 format. I’d long wished that Kodak or Fuji might relaese one of their consumer emulsions in this format, so was glad to hear of its imminent release. I was also pleased to see that it would retail for less than it’s other colour films although, given the skyrocketing cost of C41 at present, it still sells for more than Ektar did not so long ago. Nevertheless, I decided to treat myself to a pack of five rolls.
My pack of film arrived in the mail at the start of the month and, last weekend, on a sunny spring morning, I decided to go out and see what I might photograph on a roll of it. I didn’t want to go on a big day out, so decided to head to the botanical gardens in Sheffield with the intent of maybe getting some pictures of the plants in the glasshouse.
After arriving I took a picture of one of the university buildings on the street where I parked my car. It’s not the best picture, but the colours caught my eye.
The next image was of a house with a cuppola near the entrance to the botanical gardens. This shot I’m really happy with. I like how the cuppola is framed nicely with the tree branches, and also the conifer is similarly framed on the right of the image. Plus the light was great.
It was at this point that I discovered that the gardens don’t open until 10am, so I had some time to kill (it was only around 9:20am when I got there). So I decided to walk up the street beside the park and then head over towards Endcliffe Park instead. On this street I noticed a vintage motorcycle and got another photo. I’d have liked to open up the aperture to get more separation of the bike from the background but, even with relatively slow 200asa film, the light was too bright and as the Yashicamat has a maximum shutter speed of 1/500sec, I had to stop it down further to avoid overexposure. It’s a pity about the bins, but what can you do?
Just up the road from the bike was this house with a brightly painted door that I liked the look of.
Close to Hunter’s Bar roundabout, just below Endcliffe Park, is a row of attractive old houses largely hidden from view by large shrubs, but I was able to get a nice angle on them. Again, the light was lovely, and I like the church tower that peeks up behind them in the background.
Just inside the park is this lovely house. It’s the arts-and-crafts style park pavilion and lodge building, dating to 1891. The building has Grade II listing status.
I took a walk up Rustlings Road which runs beside the park – making several photos along the way with my XA3 that I had tucked away in my jacket pocket – before then wandering back through the park itself along the footpath. There are a couple of millponds here – evidence of the area’s industrial past – where I remember catching small fish in a net on a day out with my nan back when I was little. The ponds are filled with water from Porter Brook which runs down the valley before joining the River Sheaf in the city centre close to the railway station. Near the bottom of the park, where the large playing field is, sits a cafe. It was very busy on this sunny morning with many people sitting outside in the seating area across the path.
And finally, after leaving the park and walking up Brocco Bank, I finally arrived at my original intended destination – the botanical gardens. By this time I only had a single frame of the Kodak Gold remaining to be shot, and I made this picture of the gatehouse.
All the pictures were scanned on my Epson V550 flatbed using Vuescan to create RAW DNG files. These were then converted to positives with Negative Lab Pro. I’m still getting the hang of NLP, but I’ve got a group of settings that seem to be producing quite nice results for Kodak Gold (although I do still tweak them further in Lightroom afterwards).
I’m happy with the results I got from this first roll of Gold in 120 format and look forward to shooting more of it.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 10 April 2022
Yesterday I had a backlog of six rolls* of film from which I’ve not yet uploaded any shots to my Flickr account or to this blog. Today it’s eight rolls – nearly 200 frames of images.
I seem to be being quite prolific in how much I’m shooting recently. Some of this I put down to having taken a few day trips to places I’ve not visited before. This always tends to bring inspiration from seeing the unusual, unexpected, or just something different and, as a result, I tend to want to photograph as much of it as possible. Another reason is that I have quite a stash of film at present – much more than I actually thought I had – and I’ve decided to make an effort to shoot some of it rather than just sit on it waiting for some perfect occasion.
Today I shot two rolls. One, my final roll of Lomography Color Negative 100, from which I got twelve frames with my Yashicamat 124G. The other was a roll of Agfaphoto APX 100 which I had loaded in my recently acquired Olympus OM-1N. I replaced the light seals in the camera yesterday and wanted to give it a trial run to see if all is working as expected. I used to use Agfa Vista Plus for these tests, but that was when it was available for £1 a roll in Poundland (oh how I now wish I’d bought boxes of the stuff when I had the chance…), but I haven’t any of that left now and, given the current prices of colour film, I doubt I’d chance it on a test. So, the next best thing in terms of economy was the Agfa APX 100 which I have a few rolls of from a purchase a couple of years ago. As far as I know it’s exactly the same film stock as Kentmere 100 and Rollei RPX 100, just re-branded. I shot a full 36 exposures of that this morning and am scanning the negatives as I type this. The good news is that the camera seems to be operating just fine and there are no signs of light leaks.
I think one of the outcomes of this backlog might be some posts more laden with photographs than my normal output (which generally just publish a single image). I shot a roll of the new Kodak Gold 120 last week, so that might make for a single post, as will an expired roll of Truprint 200 shot a couple of weeks ago. I guess I’ll figure it out at some point before I end up with some sort of Vivian Meier-like hoard of never-seen pictures that is dicovered upon my death.
Today’s post has three pictures all themed around boats, and all shot at North Landing at Flamborough. It’s the last of my Bronica Flamborough shots from this outing, but I still have a bunch of 35mm pictures from the same trip that will see the light of day soon – although I might bump the Kodak Gold stuff up the schedules first.
* actually five-and-a-half as I have already uploaded a few frames from a roll of HP5+.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 50mm f/2.8 MC & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
I think this was the shot where I had to change lens to get the best composition. I’d been using the 75mm Zenzanon up until this point and, had I been stood further away, that lens would have coped perfectly. But that meant that other unwanted elements would have started to creep into the frame due to my distance, so the 50mm came out of the bag to take this picture. I think the 50mm might be a bit softer than the 75mm, but it’s not really noticeable in the main subject here.
I like this angle on the lighthouse. It gives it an imposing character.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 50mm f/2.8 MC & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
Several photographs of the fog signal station at Flamborough Head.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 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
A couple more pictures from Flamborough North Landing today, both showing the same building that sits above the lifeboat house about halfway down to the beach.
A few months back I remember being at the limit of my supply of new photos for the blog and thinking I’d need to dig into the archive. I’m now in the opposite position of having a glut of pictures that I’ve not even uploaded (or, in the case of about a roll-and-a-half, not even scanned yet) – approximately seven rolls of film’s worth of images. I’ll likely be shooting more stuff this weekend too, so the future stash of picture will grow further. At least it’s nice to know I have plenty of new photos to fuel the blog.
And maybe I can start to reduce the stash of film I have yet to shoot – I’ve decided to just dig in and get some of the film I have shot, rather than saving the nicer / rarer stuff for some unspecified special occasion that might never arrive.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
The seaside telescope is a regular sight at resorts across the land (and across other lands too – there were binocular-style telescopes all over the palce when I visited New York a few years ago).
While there is a sense of excitement about using the devices, my own experience has generally been one of disappointment. They are often somewhat unweildy to use, their movement stiff and heavy, and by the time you find something worth looking at the money runs out. If you’re a child, this is compounded by the fact that you have to be lifted uncomfortably by your parents in order to even look through the eyepiece, let alone maneouvre the telescope to point at anything.
And yet I like taking photographs of them, even if I don’t actually look through them.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
Steel City Snapper photography 