Sheffield’s botanical gardens was opened in 1836, attracting over twelve-thousand visitors. One of the main features of the nineteen acre site are the three glass pavilions (or conservatories) which house a range of international flora not otherwise found in the local area. The three domed pavilions are connected by ridge-and-furrow sections which also contain a variety of plants, shrubs, and trees.
They make for an attractive location and are very photogenic, I think.
There were a few groups of people milling around the area when I went to take this picture. While it was impossible to avoid getting anyone in the shot at all (at least during the time I was willing to wait), I quite like the couple walking away from the shot in this case. They’re unobtrusive and nicely framed between the layers of the fountain.
I’ve seen a few branches of this burger chain when on my travels but have never had the opportunity to visit one. The Sheffield branch has now closed down, so I don’t think my chances of doing so are on the increase…
I was planning on developing a roll of Tri-X today but hit a roadblock when I couldn’t get the film leader out of the cassette. I have an extractor tool, but it’s a bit hit-and-miss, and the alternative method of using a damp piece of film to pull it out failed me as well. I’ve resorted to buying a (hopefully) better extractor.
I wish my Nikon F80 had an option to keep the leader out on rewind.
I went to the cinema to see Avatar:Fire and Ash today. The film was entertaining in the same wat the other two have been, although I could do without the bladder-straining three-hour-plus running time, and the 4k high-framerate visuals in the screening I attended at times made it look like a videogame cutscene.
The cinema I visited was The Arc in Rotherham. After the film ended I went for a short walk around the area to try and finish a partly used roll of film I had in my Olympus Trip. The light was lovely and I hopefully got some nice pictures (although it’s an expired roll of slide film, so we’ll have to wait and see…).
However, one thing I wasn’t expecting to see was an altercation between a rat and a crow!
I fully understand that there are rats lurking in busy town centres – us messy humans give them a ready supply of food and shelter – but it’s quite unusual to witness them on the pavement, especially on a bright afternoon. What is even more unusual is to see them in some sort of life-and-death struggle with a crow! As I approached the scene, I saw the rat being harrassed by the bird, which kept grabbing its tail in its beak and pulling it backwards towards the road. When a passerby approached the crow would hop or fly out of the vicinity until it felt safe to return and resume it’s actions.
The rat was alive, but was moving slowly with a limp, perhaps due to the crow’s attacks, or maybe some previous injury, and there was no place for it to flee apart from beneath a car parked on the pavement, but I’m pretty certain the crow would have gotten under there without trouble. I felt bad for the rat and wondered if I should attempt a rescue, but I had nothing to grab it with and didn’t fancy getting bitten and contracting some nasty disease, so I decided against it.
Crows are intelligent creatures and I had a distinct sense that it was attempting to pull the injured rat to the road where it would be run over and thus provide a tasty meal. Or maybe it thought the rat’s tail was a juicy worm?
It was a fascinating, yet horrible thing to witness.
The picture below is of Rotherham railway station which is across the road from where it all occurred.
I wasn’t sure what to post about for my first post of the year (and the beginning of my eighth year of consecutive daily posting!). I don’t have anything that really screams “new year”, so instead I’ll continue to post pictures from the roll of Ilford Type-517 that I shot while testing the Minolta X-300 that I got in the batch of faulty SLRs I bought from eBay last year.
The Minolta performed well, giving nicely exposed pictures, and there’s usually little to fault with a 50mm lens from this period when it was the defacto kit-lens from most manufacturers.
Today’s trio of pictures show Bailey House in Rotherham. It’s currently occupied by the local council, but once-upon-a-time it was home to Grattan, purveyor of mail-order catalogue shopping since 1912. The Rotherham location wasn’t the head office, I don’t believe – I think those were (are?) in Bradford. The building is unassuming in many ways, but the protruding modernist windows add a touch of sci-fi.
I took our Christmas decorations down today – always a depressing activity, I find. Normally I would insist we keep them up until New Year’s Day has passed (although not usually until the traditional 12th Night), but compromised this year as my wife hates having them up once Christmas has passed. It doesn’t make me sad as much as it used to, but I would prefer to try and eke out that cosy Christmas feeling a bit longer.
I probably have too many cameras. Not a ridiculous amount – I’m not one of these people with dozens of different Nikon SLR’s on a display shelf or something, but a few too many to make regular use of. I try my best to use all of them, but most often I just tend to reach for my favourites, so five or six cameras tend to be in relatively frequent rotation, while the others sit unused for lengthier periods of time. I’ve been thinking for a while that I should perhaps reduce their number.
So this week I bid on and won an auction for six SLR cameras…
I’m really not sure why I did this, especially when considering what I’ve said at the start of the post. But do it I did, and I’m now the proud owner of six SLRs sold as “Not working or for parts“.
The cameras arrived the other day, and I’ll give a brief outline of each:
Fujica STX-1 with 50mm f/1.9 X-Fujinon lens – In very good cosmetic condition. Working mechanically. Light meter working. Light seals needed to be replaced (I did this last night). I’ve been out with this camera today to test it and, while I’ve yet to finish the roll and develop the negatives, I’m relatively confident that it works ok. It’s a relatively basic model with fully manual control and feels nice and solid in the hand.
Minolta X-300 with 50mm f/1.7 Minolta MD lens – In very good cosmetic condition. Working mechanically. Light meter working. Light seals needed to be replaced (I did this last night), and it needed a bit of a clean (also done last night). I’m relatively confident that this one works ok too, although I’ve yet to load a film and test it properly. While I believe the X-300 is a relatively entry-level model, it has more features than the Fujica.
Nikon EM with 28mm f/2.8 Vivitar MC lens – In very good cosmetic condition. Working mechanically. Light meter working, although I had to remove a corroded battery and clean the terminals first. Light seals need to be replaced (still to be done). The Nikon EM is often derided as being a cheap amateur’s camera, and one that switched to plastic for parts of it’s body. While it’s undoubtedly a basic camera in comparison with many of its stablemates, I was pleasantly surprised at how solid it feels – it feels a lot more rugged than some other, later model, SLRs I’ve used. I’m looking forward to testing this one and seeing the results I get. I have a couple of non-gelded Nikkor auto-focus lenses that I can use with it too.
Cosina CT-1 with 50mm f/2 Cosinon-S lens – In very good cosmetic condition. Working mechanically but the light meter is not currently working – again, some signs of corrosion on the battery terminals. I’ve cleaned them, but the meter still isn’t working. Light seals need to be replaced (still to be done). I’ll have a further play with this to see if I can get the meter to operate. If not, then it should still work fine with an external meter (or Sunny 16) and I’ll test it this way if I have no success. I’ll probably sell this one on though.
Canon T70 with 50mm f/1.8 Canon FD lens – In very good cosmetic condition. Not working. The battery terminals looked like they needed a clean, but the camera draws power from batteries and the LCD display activates. Unfortunately it does nothing else. This is a shame as it feels like a very solid camera. I was always a little dubious about the somewhat wide design of Canon’s T-series lineup but, on holding it in my hand, it feels great. I’ll probably sell this one for spares / repairs.
Miranda G with 5cm f/1.9 Auto Miranda lens – In dirty cosmetic condition with some scuffs. The shutter button is missing. The camera is not working at all. Another one that I will attempt to re-sell as spares / repairs.
So, all-in-all, a bit of a mixed bag. Hopefully (assuming testing goes well) I will have three fully working cameras.
Oh, and two of the cameras had rolls of film in them (one Fuji Superia 200,the other some Fotomax 200). I’ve no idea how long these have been in the cameras, although neither seemed to have been more than a few frames into the roll, so I suspect they may be largely unused. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve sat in the cameras for over twenty years though. I don’t think I’ll attempt to shoot or develop either roll.
As to why I bought them, well the obvious answer is G.A.S., but I think that is only partially true as none of the cameras in the batch where models I was looking to acquire specifically. I think the only real reason I can come up with is that I quite like the idea of having a camera of two that I’m less averse to taking risks with, such as going out in the rain or snow with them without worrying unduly that they might be damaged. That’s not to say that I plan on treating them recklessly, but I also won’t panic if they get a bit of water on them from time to time, or I go to a sandy beach on a windy day.
Now, another way to deal with this would be to buy a truly rugged camera (A Nikon F4, or a Pentax LX, or something) that can handle the elements in their stride, but those types of camera tend to fetch much more money and, while I’d like such a thing, it’s not top of my list. So, for now, this batch of cheaper and more basic cameras will have to do. I can always sell them on again (hopefully as more valuable “working and film tested” items. 🙂
Steel City Snapper photography 