Ridgeway – Steel City Snapper photography

I shot my first real roll through my recently acquired GW690 last week. When I say “real” roll, it’s actually the second one – the first was a roll of Velvia that the previous owner had left in the camera when they sold it. It had seven unused frames which, in my eagerness to try out the camera, and the somewhat temperemental relationship I have with that particular film, meant that I was mostly unhappy with the results. The compositions were not especially interesting, the exposures were not good – I blew the highlights significantly in most of the shots – and my scans were disappointing in their colour reproduction. As a result I’ve not uploaded a sigle frame from the roll.

For this second attempt I used something I knew I should have more success with – at least in the exposure and scanning apects, if not the composition of the images (although, in this, I hope I still managed to get something nice). The results are much better than the first set, although still not quite perfect and, given the relative expense of using the camera – just eight shots per roll! – I need to up my game, slow down, and pay full attention to what I’m doing. Also, at this satge, I still have that “exciting new camera” feeling, so I’m probably not doing the best I can. Most of the shots are nice though, but a couple are slightly soft due to camera shake (I think I maybe need to do some weight training before using this handheld 🙂 ), and a couple of slightly dull compositions.

The photo posted today is one of the frames I liked. The curve of the road is nice and the light is good. It also shows the very nice results that the lens on the GW690 can produce.

More to come soon…

Fujica GW690 & Ilford Delta 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°.

Taken on 20 December 2020

As a treat for my birthday this year, I decided to get myself a Bronica ETRSi. I’d been thinking about a different aspect-ratio medium format camera for some time (and almost bought one a few months back), so my birthday seemed a good time to take the plunge. The camera I got is in nice condition and came with the 75mm Zenzanon f/2.8 lens, the speed-grip, and the AEII prism finder. The camera is very heavy in comparison with any others I own and, especially when the lens hood is fitted, looks like I’m carrying a movie camera around with me!

The camera came fitted with the standard, plain ground-glass focussing screen. While this is in pristine condition, I found that it was very difficult to finesse my focusing – especially when using wider apertures at closer distances. However, I managed to find a split-prism finder that someone had advertised as faulty and scratched, so I took the plunge and took a chance on it. The new focusing screen works fine and, while it’s certainly seen some action and gained a number of battle scars in its time, it’s still nice and bright and the focussing is much, much easier with the split prism.

I took a few family shots last week and decided to finsh off my test roll this lunchtime so headed out to the nearby village of Ridgeway for a short walk and to shoot the remaining six frames. While the camera is very weighty, the speed-grip makes it pretty comfortable to handle in both landscape and portrait orientations, and I had no problems controlling it.

I dropped the film off on my way back to work and was very fortunate when the lab were able to process it before they closed this afternoon, so a big thanks and shout-out to the great people at Peak Imaging.

Here are three of the shots that I’ve scanned and uploaded.