Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+ (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
Taken on 13 April 2024
Outside the station
Tag: Sheffield
Four canal bridges in Attercliffe
I posted some other photos of bridges spanning the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal recently – those shot with my Zeiss medium format folding camera. The ones here were shot on the same day with my Olympus XA3 along the same stretch of water in Attercliffe, Sheffield.
I think I said in the earlier post that this is now a pleasant stretch of the can to walk along. It has a high embankment on both sides which shields it from what is otherwise quite an industrial part of the city. The spring foliage also brings a pleasantly arboreal feel to the place.
When I was much younger the canal was horribly polluted. I remember crossing it on the bus route that took me into the city centre and the water was a vivid orange colour, presumably due to pollutants from the steel industry in the area. Now the water is clear and sustains fish and other wildlife.
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+ (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 April 2024
Spartan Works
This factory, along with it’s distinctive logo, has been around for as long as I remember. When I was a kid I always thought it was a Roman centurion’s head depicted, but the name of the place – Spartan Works – shows I was wrong.
The building is, I believe, currently subject to a planning order that will involve demolition, erection, and conservation of buildings on the site. I hope the Spartan remains.
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+ (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 April 2024
Over the canal
A couple more shots of the canal today. Despite the slightly industrial quality of some of the bridges, it’s actually quite scenic down there.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 April 2024
Down the canal
A couple of photos of the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal in Sheffield.
I publish this while listening to excited chatter on the TV news about a July General Election. About time!
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 April 2024
University expansion and sports centres
It seems that, whenever a new building is being built in Sheffield, that there’s a good chance that it it will belong to the university (or one of the universities, I should say, as there are two). This part of the formerly industrial district of Attercliffe has not escaped, and there are several new buildings in place, some new development underway, as well as a host of sports facilities (which is perhaps as it should be, as the area used to be the home of the now demolished Don Valley Stadium that was originally erected for the World Student Games that was held in the city in 1991.
The building in the background in the above picture is the English Institute for Sport. Below is another view. I wasn’t sure if the masts are a structural feature, or there for show, but a quick online search reveals that they support the building’s roof.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 April 2024
Urban landscape
Last month I took my Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 folding camera for it’s first outing in quite some time – about two years, in fact!
It’s quite a nice camera, if a little slow to operate due to its uncoupled rangefinder design which requires focus to be achieved by means of a dial on top of the camera that operates the rangefinder, and then manually transferring the distance on the dial to the lens itself. The lens is quite nice though and gives good results if you set it correctly. Plus, of course, the folding design means it can be slipped into a pocket (ok, a big-ish pocket).
Transferring the focus distance is straightforward enough but, if you’re not paying attention (or haven’t used the camera in a while!) it can be easy to make mistakes where some of the distances have half marks. This is what happened on this outing, and I only realised after I’d taken four or five pictures. I hoped that my use of small apertures might have reduced any focus issues, but on looking at the scans, a few frames are noticeably soft.
The two shots shared here are ok though, as are some others that I’ll share over the next few days. Hopefully I’ll pay closer attention next time I shoot with the camera.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 April 2024
Getting it wrong – push processing film shot at box speed
Over the last few weeks I’ve posted a whole bunch of photos taken with my Olympus XA3 on Ilford HP5+, which I pushed a stop to 800asa.
Or so I thought…
After receiving a comment about one of my posts using this setup, where I was asked if there was a reason I was shooting the film at 800ASA, I replied that it was to aid me during the low light conditions that are prevalent during the UK winter. Given that the camera has no manual control of shutter speed or aperture, this is a logical thing to do to get faster speeds and avoid camera shake.
But after replying, a small exclamation mark began to flash above my head. So I took a look at the camera manual and, lo and behold, it turns out I’ve not actually been shooting at 800ASA at all, but at 400ASA – HP5+’s box speed. Although the XA3 allows the ASA setting to be changed, it turns out that it will automatically override this if a DX code is present on the film being used. The manual control is just for non-DX coded films!
So in actual fact, I’ve been overdeveloping my film by push processing it!
Fortunately for me, the shots are all perfectly usable, and it’s a testament to Ilford’s HP5+’s resilience to these sort of damn fool mistakes that this is the case.
Anyway, here’s a random shot of one of the impacted frames, proving that if you ever accidentally push your HP5+ by a stop in DD-X, you will likely be forgiven your mistake…
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Taken on 20 January 2024
I used to skate here
The Gosvenor Casino in Sheffield occupies the building that once housed Silver Blades, once the city’s only ice-skating rink. Sheffield still has an ice-rink, but it’s now located in Attercliffe and is the home of Sheffield Steeler’s, our local ice hockey team.
Ice hockey took place at Silver Blades too, although I was never involved in the sport and just went to the rink to skate about with friends and play video games in the mini arcade that was there (teetering about on a pair of skates and attempting to play Marble Madness took a degree of skill!).
When I first went to the rink I would hire a pair of boots. They were, if I remember correctly, all purple and always felt somewhat damp and clammy. After going for awhile, I decided to invest in a pair of my own skates and got some Bauer hockey boots. While I was never a skilled skater, I was proficient, and could get up a decent sprint on the ice.
While most of the sessions involved skating around in an anti-clockwise circuit (complete with a DJ playing music from a booth overlooking the ice, usually with a bunch of kids crowded below submitting requests), there would also be a short daredevil intermission half way through the evening where the circuit would become a figure-of-eight health-and-safety nightmare (although I cant ever recall any serious collisions happening).
I’ve not skated for about three decades now. I wonder if it’s one of those things you don’t forget how to do?
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Taken on 20 January 2024
Nailing night-time
I took this photograph, of the Christmas-themed play area behind Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping mall, without much confidence that it would turn out. The light was dark, I only had 400asa film in the camera, and the XA3 only really gives me control of the zone-focus . Everything else is handled by the camera’s small electronic brain.
So colour me impressed by how well this turned out. I have no idea what aperture was selected, but it was good enough to get the important elements in acceptable focus. Likewise the shutter speed – there’s a little motion blur on the figure at left of frame, but it was fast enough to prevent camera shake. The exposure has given me plenty of detail in the shadows, but avoided blowing the highlights. and the sky (which was a muddy, light polluted scud of clouds) also has great definition.
It’s always great when a little camera like this delivers the goods.
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Taken on 20 December 2023
Steel City Snapper photography 