Today’s picture is one of those occasions where I looked at an everyday scene and thought, “there’s a photograph“. It was taken from the rooftop level of a multistorey car-park and when I glances over the side there was something about the arrangement of buildings that just looked right. Part of it was due to the light (although I remember having to stand and wait a few minutes for a cloud to pass in front of the sun before it looked just as I wanted it to). Part of it is the different geometric patterns and textures on each of the buildings. I also like the way the road briefly appears at bottom left before vanishing amongst the architecture. It’s also a somewhat empty picture, with no signs of human foot or road traffic to be seen.
I received the sad news yesterday that my local film lab appears to have closed down. I last used them about a month ago to process the roll of Portra 800 which I’ve been sharing photos from the past few days and had planned to drop another roll of C41 off in the next week. I took a look at their website the other evening and noticed that it appeared to be offline, just displaying a blank page with no content, but assumed a temporary problem. But then, yesterday, someone else mentioned that there were posts on Twitter about it having been closed when it was visited in person and that the nearby businesses reported no-one has been seen for over a week. Some people on Twitter are concerned because they have posted film to be developed and now have no idea what has happened to their rolls.
I don’t know the precise cause of the closure, but it would appear to have been quite sudden.
I’m sad about this happening. They were a good lab with friendly and helpful staff (to whom I send my thoughts that they are ok). I stopped using them quite as much during and following the pandemic as, when they had to close for a few months as part of the lockdown, I taught myself how to develop black and white film at home, but I still regularly took all my C41 and E6 films there. It looks like I will now have to start using my local camera store for film developing services. While it’s still relatively convenient, being just on the edge of the city centre, it won’t be the same as the short walk I’ve been able to take advantage of these past few years.
I’m not sure if anything will happen to the lab – whether it is closed permanently, or might be rescued in some fashion – but it’s disappointing news for sure.
Today’s picture is from the first roll of film I had developed at the lab back in 2016.
There always seems to be construction taking place in Sheffield, much of it seemingly either extensions to the university, or accommodation for the students. I don’t know what the subject of today’s photograph will be (and it might not be anything to do with the university at all), but it wll change the skyline and feel of the place in some new and previously un-experinced way.
Yesterday, when returning to my car after a rail journey, I looked down one road only to realise that another new building had now changed the look of the street completely. Where once the road curved away with low-rise buildings and a view of the sky, now these low-rises have a much larger and taller building rearing up behind them. I think it will make for an interesting picture, especially in its current partially-constructed state, so I will try and get down there with my camera soon,
This same feeling of change, where much travelled routes now feel strangely unfamilliar, is becoming much more commonplace. I wonder if this is just because of the pace of change, or perhaps the fact thatt I’m getting older and the new is becoming overlaid upon my memories of the old?
Whatever the case, this sunny day picture shot on Portra 800 (over-exposed a stop to 400asa) looks rather nice. The bright sunny conditions could have something (probably a lot) to do with this, but I much prefer how the film looks in these conditions than how it performed shot at box speed on an overcast day.
Olympus 35 RC & Kodak Portra 800 (shot at 400asa). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I’ve made a decision today to begin uploading smaller scans to Flickr. Normally, I upload a JPEG version of the original scan at full resolution (this is 2400dpi for medium format negatives scanned on my Epson V550, and 3600dpi for 35mm negatives scanned on the Plustek). These are my raw scans which I then process further in Lightroom and add a white border in Photoshop before uploading to my Flickr account. These scanning resolutions are, to my eyes, the ones that pull the maximum detail from the negatives for these particular scanners without them simply becoming bigger files with no increase in detail.
The downside of these resolutions is that the scans are big. Not just in terms of pixel count, but also in terms of file size. The resulting TIF file for a 6×6 medium format colour negative can be around 150-200 megabytes, and even black and white TIF still come in at around half that size. This means that I’m using a significant amount of drive-space to store these files. Thankfully, the exported JPEG files are much smaller – around 15-20 megabytes for a 6×6 colour image. However, this still adds further space requirements on top of the TIF originals.
What I’ve noticed on Flickr is that, while it’s nice to have the full resolution image on there, after a certain amount of zooming there’s little notable benefit to be seen. In fact, at smaller enlargement sizes, they look sharper and nicer on the eye. So I’ve decided that I will no longer upload a full resolution JPEG, instead limiting medium format images to 3072 pixels on the short edge (a 3k image), and for 35mm pictures, 3072 pixels on the long edge. These pictures look nice on Flickr and still allow for a good, detailed image when zoomed in. They also have a nice bonus benefit of reducing the filesize by approximately two thirds for each image. If I retrospectively re-size my archive of JPEGs I expect that I can reduce the total disk-space required to store them by many tens of gigabytes, which is a worthwhile endeavour.
The picture in today’s blog is one that I’ve gone back and resized and, if you click on it to see it on Flickr, I think you’ll probably agree that the images is plenty big enough.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I was going to post different photos and maybe write a longer piece today but my broken ankle is aching and I don’t want to be sat at the PC any longer than I have to.
The picture I’ve chosen instead was taken while walking to the railway station about a month ago on one of the hottest days the country has ever faced (since records began, at least). The following day was even hotter, breaking the aforementioned records in more than one location.
The day was already very hot even at the time I made this picture, sometime between 7 and 8am, but the scene caught my eye and so I stopped momentarily to take the shot.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
The church that can be seen behind the wall and trees in this photographs is St. George’s. It is one of a trio of Commisioner’s Churches built in the city under the 1818 Church Building Act. The construction of these churches was funded following parliamentary vote.
St. George’s was consecrated in 1825 and operated for over 150 years before being declared redundant and closing in 1981. After standing unused for a number of years, the church was purchased by the University of Sheffield and now houses a lecture theatre and student accommodation.
These are the same blocks of flats that featured in yesterday’s post, but shot from a different vantage point – this time from the Broad Lane roundabout.
When I first saw the developed negatives I thought that this frame had some sort of damage – and odd, white splotch. It turned out to be the street light. 🙂
This photograph shows Sheffield University Arts Tower on the left with three of the blocks of flats next to Netherthorpe Road (there’s another block not visible in this image). Between the two blocks on the right the tower of St. Vincent’s church can just be seen through the gap.
I’ve been on my first business-focused trip today since spring 2020. I felt oddly anxious about the experience, not because of Covid or anything like that, but because I have not left my home for any work-based reasons in over two years (well, I did need to travel into town to get my faulty laptop fixed last year, but that wasn’t a meeting or anything, and it was only into my local building) and this trip involved taking a train journey to another city.
The day went well though and the biggest issue was the fact that the smart shoes I wore to go with my suit (which, while maybe not quite at the cutting edge of modern fashion any more, thankfully still fits) managed to rip the back of my heels open. This has clearly happened in the past but I’ve blanked it out of my mind until today – I know that it has happened before because there is a partially-used pack of plasters in my laptop bag from where I obviously had to perform field surgery the last time I wore the razor-backed shoes. I sat and mended my feet on a seat outside the station before I even got on the train! There’s nothing quite like a minor, but painful, injury to start the day…
I did manage to fit my 35RC into the laptop bag and, while I didn’t really have much time to take photos, grabbed a few shots on my way to and from the station. Not enough to finish the roll though, so it’ll be a while before I develop those.
Here’s another view of the University Arts Tower with the figure of a walking man neatly framed beneath a foreground tree. I hope his feet weren’t hurting.
I’m feeling quite tired today for some reason and can’t think of much to type for the blog, so I’m going to use that as an excuse for this shorter post. Hope you like the picture of the benches. Despite the title… NOBODY IS ON THE BENCH!!!! 😀
Steel City Snapper photography 