A mini-break from the Madeira pictures today. More of them still to come though.

I went for a walk around Damflask reservoir this morning. It sits to the north-west of Sheffield and is the lowest of four reservoirs that sit in the same valley system (the others being Agden, Dale Dyke, and Strines). I’ve visited Damflask on multiple occasions, particularly when I was a lot younger, and more recently driving past it when visiting the villages of High and Low Bradfield. Today was the first time I’ve ever walked around the entire thing though.

I was there to shoot film primarily, and I’ve got a bunch of shots to be developed, but I also had a second agenda, namely to test out some neutral density grad filters. I’ve had a set of Cokin filters for years but only used them on a very small number of occasions, probably due to the faff of having to attach them, but recently I’ve been thinking that they might be helpful with film photography – particularly if I’m shooting something with a tighter exposure latitude, such as slide film.

However, I didn’t want to waste film on experiments, so I took along a digital camera as well. Any mistakes with that would cost me nothing more than a bit of time. So into my camera bag with my Nikon F80 went my old Lumix GX7 micro-four-thirds camera with a 12-60mm lens (24-120mm full frame equivalent). This was the first time I’ve used the camera in around six years.

I only took a few shots with the GX7, most of which are nothing to write home about, but the one shot where I used the grad filter (a 2-stop soft grad, I think) came out nicely, as did another picture without the filter, both of which you can see in today’s post (the first with the filter).

I took very similar shots with my F80 (which was sporting an actual 24-70mm lens, so the focal lengths will mostly match up) and it will be interesting to see how they compare. These didn’t have the benefit of any filters.

But the experiment worked ok. I like how the grad filter added mood to the sky and I’ll give it a run with a film camera when the need arises. If I get good results, I might invest in a more expensive set.

Panasonic Lumix GX7 & Panasonic Lumix G Vario 12-60mm f/3.5-5.6 Asph.

Taken on 22 August 2026