It wasn’t the best sky for photography on the day I took this. While it was a blue sky, rather than grey, which at least meant there was some contrast to be had, I still dislike empty skies most of the time, and being shot on black and white film, there wasn’t even any colour to be seen.
I think blank skies can work if you’re looking for negative space in a picture, or – if shooting colour – as a contrast to other subjects, but otherwise they can be a lot of nothing taking up a lot of the frame. This is made worse by the fact that I sometimes get banding artifacts when scanning images, which are especially noticeable in such scenes.
I’d much rather have some clouds to break things up and add interest.
Nikon F80 and Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 ED VR on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
This was taken shortly before the picture of the hawk on the power lines that I posted a few days back (that field was the next one over, beyond the hedge and tree that can be seen in the image below.
Nikon F80 and Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 ED VR on Fomapan 400 (@320asa). Semi-stand in Rodinal 1+100 for 1 hour @ 20°.
I like my Holga. Its lo-fi images have a definite charm, I feel.
This time though, the “fi” is as low as I’ve ever seen it. I really don’t know what has happened with this roll of Fomapan 400.
The white speckles from the faulty batch of which this is a part are present and correct, and the scratches that the camera has started adding to the negs have made an appearance (although I’ve cloned the worst of them out), but as for that blothcy mottling? Well, I really don’t know.
It looks like the film is damaged, or has gotten wet, but it’s been stored in it’s sealed box and wrapper since I got it and kept in the fridge, so that seems unlikely.
I suppose my development could also be to blame, although I’ve not encountered such issues before. The only thing that I can think of that might possibly have had an effect is that it was quite cold in the room when I developed the film, so it’s possible the chemicals cooled by a couple of degrees over the course of the hour’s semi-stand process, but I’m not sure if this would have been the outcome.
Despite all the problems though, if anything can carry off this distressed look, it’s the Holga, and it still manages to do so with aplomb.
Yashica Mat 124G and Ilford Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 9mins @ 20°.
I was quite happy with a lot of the pictures I made on this particular outing, but this one especially. My only issue with it is that I wonder if it might have been improved with a lower POV to hide the distant scenery?
Yashica Mat 124G and Ilford Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 9mins @ 20°.
Two shots of the same gate here, one looking straight on with the gate framed by a tree and a distant house peeking over the top. The second from a more oblique angle, showing the roof of the nearby St. Winifred’s church (more of that to come…)
Yashica Mat 124G and Ilford Delta 400. Ilfotec DD-X 8mins @ 20°.
I visited the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough back at the end of November and shot a couple of rolls of film through my Bronica ETRSi. Things didn’t go to plan and I was beset by a number of problems.
The first roll I shot was some Lomography Color Negative 800. I shot the full roll without noticing any issues (at the time), before loading a roll of Kentmere 400, and it was then that the issues made themselves known. The first was a problem with my light meter, a Sekonic L308s. It was working ok and measuring the light, but I realised after a while that the reading were a little weird and discovered that, to my dismay, that I’d somehow put the meter into cine mode. I’ve no idea how I did this, and it took quite a bit of Googling to find out how to revert it back to stills metering. By this time I’d shot the whole roll of Lomo 800, plus half of the Kentmere, without knowing how long the meter had been out.
It was shortly afterwards that I realised the second, more significant problem… I’d got the dark-slide still inserted in the Bronica! Now, this shouldn’t be a problem as the camera shouldn’t fire if the dark-slide is present but somehow the camera had been firing away without a care in the world, wasting almost half the roll of Kentmere!
I rectified the issue by removing the dark-slide and shot the rest of the roll (correctly metered this time), but I wonder if there’s some sort of fault present (or if I’d managed to somehow bypass the safety feature by ham-fisted means).
The picture shared here today of a tree casting it’s shadow on the side of this house was taken twice, once to no avail because of the above problem, and then this second attempt. I’m glad I returned to the scene as it’s probably the best shot of the day.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4. 11.5 mins @ 20°
I wasn’t sure what to post about for my first post of the year (and the beginning of my eighth year of consecutive daily posting!). I don’t have anything that really screams “new year”, so instead I’ll continue to post pictures from the roll of Ilford Type-517 that I shot while testing the Minolta X-300 that I got in the batch of faulty SLRs I bought from eBay last year.
The Minolta performed well, giving nicely exposed pictures, and there’s usually little to fault with a 50mm lens from this period when it was the defacto kit-lens from most manufacturers.
Today’s trio of pictures show Bailey House in Rotherham. It’s currently occupied by the local council, but once-upon-a-time it was home to Grattan, purveyor of mail-order catalogue shopping since 1912. The Rotherham location wasn’t the head office, I don’t believe – I think those were (are?) in Bradford. The building is unassuming in many ways, but the protruding modernist windows add a touch of sci-fi.
Steel City Snapper photography 