Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
It’ll be the 2017 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride in a few weeks’ time, so here are a few pics from last year’s event in Sheffield. This was the second outing from my (then) recently acquired Olympus 35 RC.
All shots: Olympus 35 RC & Kentmere 400 film.
Taken: 25 September 2016
A couple of photographs taken on a recent(ish) trip to Sheffield cathedral, when the venue was opened in the evening to a local photography group, enabling the use of (normally forbidden) tripods etc.
It’s the same subject in both shots, just from opposite sides.
Both shots: Yashica Mat 124 G & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 17 July 2017.
Well, this morning’s issue with linked Flickr images seems to have magically resolved itself, so here’s a bonus post to make up for the disruption!
The front end of some vintage car or other (I neglected to take note of what it was and don’t have enough here to ID it). Taken at the Classics on The Moor car rally in Sheffield.
This outing was my first time shooting Ilford Delta 100 and I’m very happy with the results. Very clean and contrasty.
Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8, Ilford Delta 100
Date taken: 6 August 2017
Between Solly Street and Scotland Street, Sheffield.
This small UFO was sighted on a lamppost in an alley joining the two roads. I’m a bit of a sucker for shallow depth of field shots.
Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+
Taken: 23 July 2017
So, as some of you who read this blog might have noticed, the gaps between posts has gradually gotten larger following the early flurry of activity when I first started. In an attempt to combat this and increase the rate at which I post, I’ve decided to change the way that I update the blog. Instead of posts containing multiple shots, I’m going to cut it back to posts containing a single image (although there may occasionally be multiple shots, and even some of the longer posts every now and again) with a concise description. This will hopefully allow me to post frequently and keep the stream of content moving. It also has the benefit of me being able to mix things up a bit and publish photos from different sessions and rolls as I feel like it, rather than posting a whole bunch of pictures from a single event, trip or location (unless I feel like it, of course!). I’ve got a large-ish backlog of pictures taken since I started the blog, plus a pool of other shots taken beforehand to choose from, so there should be no shortage of content at least. I’ve also started re-scanning some of my earlier photos to get better results (I’m now much more adept at using the scanner and software than I was back then), so some older shots have now become a bit more presentable than they were.
To kick things off, here’s a shot from the first roll I shot when getting back into film photography. It was shot on 23 July last year using my Olympus Trip 35 on Agfa Vista Plus 200 film and re-scanned recently on my Epson V550 flatbed. I’d bought the Trip to replace one I already had (given to me by my dad), but which doesn’t work properly anymore (the red flag doesn’t pop up to indicate bad exposure) and chose the Agfa Vista because it was available for £1 a roll at Poundland and, as this was my first foray back into film shooting in about twenty years, I didn’t want to risk a more expensive brand. The film was developed at a branch of Max Spielman and I was happy enough with the results, but I get the impression that film development is becoming a bit of a lost art at some of these high street outlets these days, and after a couple of subsequent rolls yielded very unsatisfying results, I switched to a pro-lab (Peak Imaging) for all subsequent processing and have been very happy with the results since.
This is the dam in Crookes Valley park, Sheffield, UK where I went with my wife and younger sons. The re-scan is far better than my original version (which was a scan of the actual print instead of the negative). The colours are better and more vivid, plus the image is sharper and has less cropping (the person’s legs at bottom left, and the child at mid-left were not visible in the original version at all).
Once again, apologies for my somewhat slower paced updating of the blog. In order to at least post something to keep the blood flow going, here’s another in my occasional Oddshots posts – just a single image that doesn’t really fit in a bigger post, or perhaps something from the archive.
This one was taken a week ago following a trip to the local cathedral (which had opened it’s doors to a local photography group for the evening). After the visit came to a close I walked back to the car to find that the street where I’d parked was bathed in gorgeous evening sunshine. Hawley Street consists of a row of terraced houses that were spared damage in the blitz, and the light on them was lovely. It’s only the contemporary cars (and maybe the odd street sign and road marking) that really date this image – it might otherwise have been taken 75 years ago. I’m not disappointed by the cars in the shot – they themselves will add a nice historical air as the photo ages.
Back at the start of the month it was my wife’s birthday, and we decided we’d go for ice-creams at a place that opened recently at the edge of the town centre. Our eldest was away on the day in question, but we dragged the younger two along with us (much to their protestations at being separated from games consoles and PCs!).
Rather than go straight for the ice-creams, we decided to take a bit of a stroll first and the shots featured in this post are what I managed to grab while we walked.
#1 – This was taken close to where we parked the car. It was only after around five shots that I realised that the camera (a Nikon F70) was set to 100 ASA instead of DX mode. As I had a roll of 400 ASA Ilford HP5+ in the camera, I suspected a bunch of overexposed shots, but they all came out surprisingly well.
#2 – The film speed now correctly set, we wandered up to Weston Park Museum where we had some coffees and soft drinks, before looking around the museum. Even with the HP5+ it was still too dim for most shots, but I took quite a few family pics, and also one or two exhibit photos, such as these mugs…
#3 – …and this set of scales, part of an exhibit on how we used to live.
#4 – After the museum, we strolled through the park itself, where I took this shot of the nearby Sheffield University Arts Tower.
#5 – A little further on, and close to the old Henderson’s Relish factory, I took another shot of the brass bottle installations that have been recently added to the area. I took other shots of these and you can see a few in another recent post.
#6 – We were getting closer to the ice-cream parlour now, but I took another couple of shots before we got there. This one of the Somme Barracks building, which dates back to 1907…
#7 – …and this shot of some balconies on a much more recent apartment building.
#8 – The ice-creams were great and I polished off this tasty cherry sundae. Yum!
#9 – I took a final shot on the way back to the car of these curious hooks on the side of the Somme Barracks building.
And, finally, here are a couple of bonus pics from the end of the roll.
#10 – The only apple in the fruit bowl that still had a stalk attached.
#11 – And a fly outside on the double-glazing (shot with a macro lens).
Apart from the family photos, there were a number of other pretty decent shots from the walk, but I’ve not gotten around to uploading them as yet, so they may (or may not) pop up on here at some point in the future.
One thing is for sure though, this was the roll of film that showed me how great HP5+ is. My prior uses (on 35mm at least) had all been slightly dull and lacking in contrast and texture, but I think it’s safe to say (as I think I have before) that this was down to operator failure. 🙂
Following on from the last post, here are the remainder of the shots taken on Saturday 27 May.
Shortly after I finished taking the photos in part one, and after walking up towards the West Street / Glossop Road area, the sun decided to re-emerge and bathed everything in bright, and pretty humid, conditions.
I’d intended to got to the pedestrianised area between the old Henderson’s Relish building and the new university buildings that stand in the spot where the old Jessop’s maternity hospital once stood. The area is in the process of gentrification at the hands of the university and is none the worse for it. As much as I like to see old architecture remaining in place, the new buildings either incorporate the old, listed, architecture, or are modern in a pleasing way that makes for interesting photographs. The university bioincubator facility has a little sculpture / garden thingy in between the buildings that was catching the light nicely too.
Rather than describe each shot, I’ll drop a selection below. As with the previous post, these are a mixture of Yashica Mat 124 G / Kodak Ektar & Olympus 35 RC / Kodak Colorplus photographs.
After this batch of shots, I started to walk back towards town down the back streets that run parallel to the main West Street drag. The remnants of the rain made for a nice reflection of a green doorway in the side of St. George’s lecture theatre (a deconsecrated church). I took two shots of this, one with the last frame of Ektar in the Yashica Mat, the other with the 35 RC.
The rest of the day’s shots were with the 35 RC, and I’m pretty happy with a number of them, especially the last two of the set below (the guy walking past the university building and the “No Entry” road marking).
The final shot below, is of the Q-Park car park building off Rockingham Street. Sheffield has its fair share of mid 20th century brutalist design car-parks, as do most towns and cities in the country, but recently seems to have acquired several of far more interesting design, such as this one.
Probably back to black and white stuff for the next post.
I went up town last Saturday with the primary intention of taking some photographs (although I did have a secondary mission to pay the deposit for a restaurant booking that my wife had made). The weather was bright and warm, with some fluffs of cumulus (and some bigger wodges of cloud on the horizon) littering the sky. This was not to last.
Despite the conditions remaining the same during the twenty minutes of so it takes to drive into the town centre, literally as soon as I got out of the car, one of the aforementioned “wodges” of cloud was threatening the day with its massive dark bulk. The weather forecast app on my phone said not a word about rain though, so I fed the parking meter and set off to get some pictures.
The weather forecast app tells lies.
I got the following shot of an old cutlery works entrance.
Then I followed the street leading to the back. There I started to line up another shot when I felt a few spots of rain – not heavy at this stage, but enough to potentially get on the lens and spoil the picture (indeed, a single fat droplet fell right into the open top of the Yashica Mat leaving a wet splash on the focusing screen). The only available shelter was a small doorway that was presumably a point of egress from a fire escape or something. It was approximately 18 inched deep, so enough to provide adequate shelter, but with the downside of having a noticeable air of urine odour to put up with. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and literally seconds after stepping into the doorway, the heavens opened and rain began to pour down as though someone had turned on am enormous shower in the sky. The heavy rain lasted maybe five minutes, but then took another ten to abate completely, so I remained in my shelter for quite a while. During this time I took the following shot. It’s a little out of focus, but it’s not a great shot anyway, but is included here as a memory of the moment nonetheless.
The next shot was taken from right outside my sheltering spot )it is directly to the right of where I took this photo).
It’s interesting to see how the tarmac has worn from the streets in this area, revealing the original cobbled surface beneath. As well as the Yashica Mat, I also had my Olympus 35 RC with me, still loaded with the remaining frames of the roll of Kodak Colorplus I’d been shooting previously, and it was with this that I got the shot below (my sheltering place can be seen at the bottom left of the frame).
Further along this same street, I took the next shot of some graffiti. The shot is quite nice (if you like this sort of thing) with lots of texture and detail. The small red shape that can be seen at the bottom of the boarded-up window is actually a small door that has been affixed and is labeled “The home of Abdul the world’s smallest muslim”. Whether Abdul is a fictional character in the mind of the artist who added the doorway, or represents a real person (though presumably not small enough to fit through this small doorway!), I know not, but it adds some additional interest to the shot.
A couple more street shots from the same area are next, one from the Yashica Mat, the other form the 35 RC. There’s a slight John Bulmer-ish feel to the second shot in terms of the colour and conditions that I like.
It’s interesting to think that, although relatively lightly traversed nowadays, that these streets would have been hives of activity at one time, with many hundreds of people employed in the area.
The last shot of this batch is taken again with the 35 RC, although I did a black and white conversion on the Colorplus as I liked the result better than the original colour image.
The weather was to brighten up again shortly after taking this last shot, and I’ll document the remaining pictures in the next post.
This is the third and (I think) final post regarding last Sunday’s walk around Victoria Quays in Sheffield. The first two parts can be found in the links below.
The main difference in the shots posted in this piece is that they were shot with a different camera – a Minolta Hi-Matic G2 – and on colour negative film – Agfa Vista Plus 200. I picked the camera up a few months back for £2 when I saw it in a box of compact cameras at a camera fayre. All the items in the box cost £2 each and I ended up with three of them: the Minolta, a Konica Pop, and an Olympus Superzoom 105G. I like to have a camera on me when going out even if not specifically to take photographs, and small compacts like this are ideal for the purpose. I’ve used a number of them over the past six months or so, usually just loading them with a roll of film and then chucking them in a coat pocket to be used in the event that something interesting turns up while I’m out and about.
I always use Agfa Vista Plus 200 as the first film through a newly acquired camera for the simple reason that it can be had for £1 a roll at Poundland (or at least it could, recent developments have revealed that Poundland are to stop stocking the film) and I’d rather that, if the camera turns out to be faulty, I waste a cheap roll of film than some more expensive Tri-X or Portra or something. That said, despite its low-cost, I do like the results the film gives, especially in bright, sunny conditions, and it has a slight magenta tone to it that I think looks nice.
The Minolta is quite a nice little camera. It’s pretty no frills, being a zone-focus camera with little manual control other than setting the focus distance via the lens barrel. It’s very similar to an Olympus Trip 35, but has the advantage of having the distance scale as well as the icons on top of the barrel (the Trip has the icons on the top only, and the distance scale beneath the barrel, which is a little awkward if you’ve not memorized them and can’t remember just how far away the head-and-shoulders icon represents). I also prefer the wind lever on the Minolta to the Trips’ thumb-wheel winder. It’s not as nice looking as the Trip 35 though, but it still has its own charm and it feels nice in the hand. The lens is a 38mm f/2.8 and is nice and sharp. Out of the 25 frames I got from the roll, none is out of focus, a testament to my skill in measuring distances (or perhaps that they were almost all shot in bright conditions and the narrower aperture would’ve covered my mistakes!). The camera’s aperture is set automatically but can be seen through the viewfinder on applying a half-press of the shutter button, giving an idea as to the results you will get from the shot. The camera takes a discontinued 1.35v mercury cell, but mine has a 1.5v inserted and I just compensated by setting the ASA dial two-thirds of a stop slower so that the camera thought I was shooting 125 ASA film rather than the 200 ASA roll that was inside, and the exposures are all pretty much spot on.
These shots were taken after finishing off the roll of Fomapan 200 in the Yashica Mat, and are mostly from the walk away from the canal basin and onto the beginning of the canal proper. I’ll not post every shot I took, but the ones here give a flavour of it and some indication of what this little camera can produce.
The first is of a boat used for cruises up and down the canal – I think they have discos and dining onboard sometimes. I’ve heard of people going on these events but have never done so myself.
The next couple are of the Sheaf Quay building (I also posted a shot of this taken with the Yashica Mat 124 G in part #2).
Next is a random barge. The shot above was taken from the towpath just in front of this boats’ bows.
The next shot is still on Agfa Vista Plus 200, but converted to black & white in Lightroom. I think the contrasts of light and shade suit mono better than the colour original.
Just beyond the chimney stack and under the next bridge, I took a couple of shots of other boats, one in the water (I like the wavy, geometric reflections of the building in this shot), and another up on the opposite bank of the canal.
I took a few more shots in this area before walking back to the canal basin and back to the car park. I had to wait for a short time while a man the manually operated swing bridge that joins the north and south parts of the quay. Just on the opposite bank is a bicycle used to advertise a local second-hand shop. Again, I took a similar shot (albeit of a different bike) with the Yashica Mat which can be seen in part #2.
The final shot of the day was taken as I walked through the car-park back to my car. I liked the way the sunlight was falling on the space between the alternating decks of the car park and so grabbed the shot below. Again, I think this works better in black and white.
All-in-all, the little Minolta is a nice camera. I’m pleased with the results and will likely use it again at some point. I don’t think it really offers anything the Olympus Trip 35 doesn’t also provide, but it’s enjoyable to use. Certainly well worth the £2 I paid for it!
