A tiring day

March 1, 2025 fishyfisharcade7 Comments

It’s been a good day today. Not only did I have the time to take an outing with my camera(s), the weather was also perfect too. This sort of alignment of the fates is a rarity!

I decided to take a day trip to Lincoln. Lincoln is a nice city to wander around with plenty to see and photograph, and it has the added bonus of only being about an hour’s drive away.

The weather forecast had given the impression of clear blue skies which, while better in many regards to flat grey skies, can also be a little uninteresting, but I was blessed with blue skies full of streaks of thin high-altitude cloud, meaning I got the benefit of the good light with the bonus of interesting textures.

I managed to shoot three-and-a-half rolls of film – two-and-a-half colour, and a roll of B&W.

Although it was a great day, there was one small hiccup – I forgot to change the ASA dial on my Olympus OM-10 and shot the entire roll of Agfa APX 100 at 400ASA. This normally wouldn’t be a problem as I’ve pushed film on many occasions before (even if this time it was accidental), but it seems there is very little data out there on pushing Agfa APX 100 beyond 200ASA.

It looks like I can develop it for 25 minutes(!) in Rodinal 1+50, but there are no times for Ilfotec DD-X. There are calculations that can be used to get a rough idea of how long to push films, but I prefer to use tried and tested methods – I think there will be some nice photos on the roll and I don’t want to ruin them with ham-fisted experimentation.

Other alternatives include stand or semi-stand development (but, again, it’s not something I’ve done before, and I’m a bit worried about maintaining the temperature to avoid bromide drag), and splashing out on a bottle of Ilford HC (or HC-110, or one of the other variants) – which also has a recipe for pushing the film two stops. Or rather for pushing Kentmere 100 by two stops (I believe they are the same film stock).

Anyway, I’ll be sure to let my reader know what I decide to do and how I fare. Wish me luck!

Olympus OM-10, E-Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 22 December 2024

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Hendo

October 27, 2022 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 20 September 2022

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Pandas

June 17, 2021 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

New Era Square is a recently completed development to the south of the city centre, just the other side of the ring-road that circles the middle of town. It consists of three building surrounding a pedestrian plaza and has been dubbed in the local press as “Sheffield’s Chinatown”, and “Sheffield’s very own version of New York’s Times Square” apparently, although the latter would seem a little on the ambitious side.

One of the features of the development is a family of three eye-catching panda statues. A public campaign sought names for each of the trio from the readers of the local paper, The Star. The final names chosen were Little Mester, who sits on a bench – named in reference to the small cutlery workshops which used to be numerous in the city; Coe Coe, a small panda climbing one of the building columns – named after Sebastian Coe, the Olympic athlete who lived in Sheffield as a boy; and Hendo, the largest of the three pandas which was mounted on the roof of one of the buildings for a while, but who now sits in the plaza, and is named after Sheffield’s much-loved local delicacy, Henderson’s Relish (or Hendo’s as it is generally known).

I don’t have a close-up photo of Coe Coe, but he can be spotted in one of the images featuring Hendo and Little Mester if you look carefully.

Not Winnie the Pooh
Nor Baloo. But pandas are
A type of bear too