Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
Ah, one of my old favourite subjects; power-lines marching across the landscape to destinations unknown. This one enhanced, I think, by the compression given by the telephoto lens and, most of all, by the hawk perched upon the wires.
Nikon F80 and Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 ED VR on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
Taken on 8 February 2026
We’ve not had any frost (at least not that I’ve been up early enough to witness!) for a few weeks now. This was shot six weeks ago.
It’s not the best ever picture of a frosty leaf (I’ve taken better ones myself), but it was a decent test of the 70-200mm lens on close-up subjects. Parts of the leaf have fallen out of focus due to the the closeness of the subject from the lens.
Nikon F80 and Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 ED VR on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
Taken on 8 February 2026
Last month I wrote about how I was unsatisfied with the quality of the Tamron 28-200mm lens I had and how I’d traded it in for a Nikon 70-200mm.
So far I’ve shot the Nikkor on a few occasions and the results have been noticeably sharper than those from the Tamrom, which is good. The downsides that I also discussed (size, weight, and lack of flexibility mostly) have also been borne out, but I knew this would be the case, and the improved image quality win out.
I’ve already posted a digital picture I took with the lens, but these are the first film shots I’ve shared on the blog. They were taken during a walk around the local country park, which has a healthy population of waterfowl.
Nikon F80 and Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 ED VR on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
Taken on 8 February 2026
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
Taken on 20 December 2025
Yashica Mat 124G and Ilford Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 9mins @ 20°.
Taken on 24 January 2026
Musicians are getting younger and younger!
Yashica Mat 124G and Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 10.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
The building in today’s post is the former home of British Telecom in Sheffield. It was known, imaginatively, as Telephone House until the company moved to other premises. It now provides apartments for university students.
Yashica Mat 124G and Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 10.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
The first of these two pictures featured in my favourite shots of 2025 post, but the second hasn’t been shown before.
As mentioned yesterday, these shots are taken from a short roll loaded from my recently acquired bulk loader. I chose Fomapan 400, in a shorter 17m roll for this first time out, mostly because it’s pretty cheap compared with something like HP5+ and wouldn’t be a bankruptcy risk if I somehow messed things up but, also, partially because I’m curious about trying different development methods with Fomapan 400 – a film which I often find to be underexposed or very contrasty when I’ve shot it a box speed before but which gave me some good results when I tried semi-stand development with some 120 reel film.
I tried the semi-stand approach on two occasions with the 120 variant, the first time with great results, but with the second giving me some noticeable bromide drag. I’m unsure why the results were different as I used the same methodology on both occasions, but they were.
For this roll of 35mm Foma 400 I used 1-hour semi-stand again (in Rodinal 1+100), but instead of 30secs of inversions at the start, plus a single inversion at 30 minutes, this time I gave the tank a single, gentle inversion at the 15, 30, and 45 minute marks. For this roll, at least, there are no signs of bromide drag, so I’ll try the same method on my next attempt.
The results are very grainy, but I expected this and it’s not something I mind – it adds some grit to the images – but the tonality is good (though this might also be partly due to shooting it at 320asa instead of the 400asa box speed) without the heavy contrast I’ve seen in the past when using regular development in Ilfotec DD-X.
But, anyway, the first roll of self-loaded film was mostly a success (it did come off the spool at the end, requiring me to remove it from the camera in a changing bag) and I have another, longer roll waiting to be shot in my F80. I’m looking forward to the results from that too.
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
Taken on 20 December 2025
The last of this batch of pictures of the Botanical Gardens and, indeed, the last of the shots from the test of the Minolta X-300.
I’ve used it again since when testing a short roll of film (another test) that I loaded in the bulk loader that I was very kindly given by fellow blogger, Andy (see his site here). I’ll maybe post some of those soon, although one of them was used for my December picture in my 12 favourite photos of 2025 post.
I’ve since loaded another, full, roll (although I’m not quite sure how many usable frames it will have – I’m hoping for 36 though!)
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Ilford Type-517. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 14.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
Following up from yesterday’s pictures of the pavillions in Sheffield’s botanical gardens, here are a few pictures I took within. Warm and humid greenhouses are not the most condusive places to use metal and glass cameras that have been brought inside from the cold, but after a bit of acclimatisation all was good to make some photographs.
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Ilford Type-517. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 14.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
