Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
A couple of pictures of boats in Staithes harbour today. They were probably taken about thirty minutes apart and the tide has risen by a small, but noticeable amount in the interim.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022
On the third day of our trip to the Yorkshire coast we visited Staithes, a picturesque and quaint fishing village up the coast from Whitby. While there are more modern areas of housing in the village, these sit at the top of the area. The older buildings down by the harbour are reached via steep roads on either side of Staithes Beck. Coming down the hill isn’t too much of a difficulty. Getting back up requires some air in your lungs!
As with much of this trip, the weather was mostly overcast (in fact it rained heavily when we first arrived). The tide was also out at the time of our visit, leaving many of the small boats in the harbour beached. I’ll have more pictures from Staithes to post here in the coming days.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022
A while back I posted about how I was going to begin uploading images to Flickr at a lower size than I have previously done. This process has been working fine – the JPEG images I upload are still plenty big enough, and I’ve kept the full-resolution original scans on my computer.
However, I’ve noticed today that the majority of my WordPress posts which feature images where I’ve replaced the original files on Flickr are now showing the photo description, rather than the embedded image. The links work fine, taking you to the Flickr version, and if I edit the posts, I can see the images displayed onscreen. But otherwise they are missing as in-line images from the posts, e.g. this post.
At first I wondered if it was a browser caching problem, but the same lack of pictures can be seen in multiple browsers on different devices. I also wondered if the URLs to the Flickr versions might have changes when I replaced the images on there, but they are identical. I’ve even edited the problem posts to remove the original links and replace them, but the same thing still occurs. Oddly, not all posts featuring images that I’ve replaced are affected, so the whole Flickr thing might be a big red herring!
I really dislike issues like this. They happen out of nowhere with no obvious cause and can take lots of meesing around to try to resolve them and I’m not in the mood to do so today. So, if you come across one of my posts that has a link rather than and in-line image, please accept my apologies. All new posts will hopefully be unaflicted, and I hope to fix the others when I get the time to figure out what exactly is going wrong.
Anyway… Here’s a picture of a nice thatched cottage at Sandsend (assuming it embeds into the post!)
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022
During our recent trip to the Yorkshire coast we decided to walk into Sandsend one evening. Sandsend is a small settlement just to the north of Whitby – If you look closely at the picture below, you can see Whitby harbour wall, some residential buildings, and the ruined abbey maybe a mile to the east.
After some rather dull weather for most of the day, the evening was lovely and we found a nice restaurant called the Fish Cottage where we shared a very tasty seafood pizza topped with smoked salmon, tiger prawns and mussels.
A couple were walking on the beach below the road as we walked past and I thought it made for a nice picture.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022
I posted a very similar photograph to this one last week – the previous shot on Portra 800, this one on Superia 400. Both were shot on the same day and at practically the same location, but the weather had changed from dull and overcast, to sunny blue skies by the time I made this second picture. I much prefer this one.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022
A few days back I was bemoaning the results from Portra 800 shot under dull, overcast conditions and how I’d thought about converting them to black and white.
On the same day that I made those pictures, in the late afternoon as we were heading back to the car the skies began to clear, the day turned bright and summery, and I was able to shoot the final two frames of the roll under these brighter conditions. The results (as seen below) are, I think, far preferable.
Despite it’s professional quality (and exhorbitant price point), I really don’t think that Portra 800 suits dull conditions much. It’s 800asa rating might say otherwise, but I think the results are lacklustre (albeit with the caveat that I’ve not actually shot much of the film, so maybe it’s the operator at fault here). The day before I shot the Portra, I’d shot some Kodak Colorplus 200 under similar conditions with my Olympus Trip 35 and much preferred those results, despite it being a cheaper, consumer-grade film.
I’ve since shot another roll of Portra 800, this time on a bright day while rating it at 400asa, and found those to be much nicer. I’m not sure I’d go out of my way to buy more of the film – I’d probably just go for it’s slightly cheaper stablemates Portra 400 and 160 and avoid shooting on dull days. The other Portra 800 shots will be along in the next week or so.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Portra 800. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022
Both of today’s photographs were taken while descending the 199 steps I posted about in the blog yesterday. They might be tough on the legs, but they do afford a nice view. 🙂
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Portra 800. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022.
One of the landmarks and visitor attractions in Whitby are the 199 Steps. These ascend from the charming pedestrian shopping streets of the east side of the town up to St. Marys Church and, a little further on, the ruins of Whitby Abbey.
The earliest record of the steps is from the 14th century, but they are believed to be older than this. Originally made of wood, the current stone steps were laid in 1774. It is said that they are a test of faith as climbing them to reach the church definitely takes some effort!
The steps are somewhat deceptive to climb as they are shallower than a stair you might find inside a home. This results in you making smaller movements of your legs than you might be used to which is odd and tiring. The spacing of the steps also makes taking two at a time more difficult than you would expect. There is a steep, sloping cobbled path beside the stairs which looks even more treacherous!
There are many photographs of this landmark to be found online – most of them better than mine here – but these were the pictures I got the chance to make on this visit.
The final shot below shows the view from the wetern side of the harbour with a sculpture of some fishwives in the foreground. You can just make out the steps in the upper right of the frame where they ascend up to the church.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Portra 800. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022.
Another Whitby picture today (and another that I think might have worked better in black and white). This horse is cleearly used to being fed handfuls of grass by passers by and, while I stood beside the wall, it placed its head right next to mine and let out a big, damp snort in my ear.
Following my ankle injury a few weeks ago I’ve been itching to get out and make some fresh photographs, and yesterday I took a trip into town with my wife (I’m not attempting to drive myself just yet – the consultant at the hospital advised waiting four weeks, so that is what I’ll do). It wasn’t a long trip and I didn’t walk very far, but I still managed to shoot a roll of HP5+ through the Yashicamat. I’ve developed the photos today but not yet scanned them. It was nice to take some pictures and even the developing (which is not a task I tend to enjoy) was quite a pleasant experience.
My ankle held up well, which is reassuring. Hopefully I’ll be able to get out more in the coming weeks.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Portra 800. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022.
I’ve been less than impressed by the results of this roll of Portra 800 primarily (I think) because it was shot under dull, overcast conditions. The resulting images are muddy and unappealing to my eye and I’ve spent some time seriously considering converting them to contrasty black-and-white versions in Lightroom and ditching the colour altogether.
While this does give more impactful images for many of the frames, the fact that this is a colour film (and a very expensive one at that!) means I’m somewhat reluctant to do so – I might have well have just used some cheaper black-and-white film in the first place (I really wish I’d taken some B&W rolls with me but I didn’t, because I am a fool).
I’ve uploaded converted versions of the colour originals at the bottom of the post. Which do you prefer?
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Portra 800. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 29 July 2022.
Steel City Snapper photography 