Newark-on-Trent – Steel City Snapper photography

Back in July I took a trip down to Newark-on-Trent to visit a photobook exhibition in a small gallery there. I was drawn mostly because there would be prints on display by British Photographer, Paul Hart, who’s work I’ve admired for a number of years. As it turned out there was only a single one of his prints on display (although the gallery owner was kind enough to show me another print he had in storage) and I might not have made the trip had I known that would be the case, but the exhibition was nonetheless still worthwhile, I had an interesting talk with the gallery owner, and Newark is only an hour away, so it’s not a huge undertaking to get there.

I also wandered around taking pictures, shooting with three different cameras: my Yashica Mat 124G, my Olympus XA3, and my Olympus OM-10. I’ll share pictures from the other two in due course, but the photos shown here today are all from the OM-10 which had a roll of expired Ilford Delta 400 loaded. I think I bought the film from a stand at Photo North earlier in the year. It didn’t cost much and I’ve had mostly favourable results with expired black and white film, sometimes with images that look like they were shot on fresh film.

As I didn’t know the provenance of this roll, I over-exposed it perhaps a little more than I needed (I usually go with half-a-stop per decade of expiry, but in this case went a full two stops). I think a stop, or maybe a stop-and-a-half would have sufficed as the negs were a bit dense when I took them from the developing tank. Nothing that couldn’t be mostly rescued in post-processing though. There are some mild signs of the films age – some frames on the roll (though not so much these) have blotches and spots – but that’s the risk you take when shooting old film, I guess.

So here are the results.