Topic: Great Western Railway electrification - a blot on the landscape

[Pete_R]

A project completed in a day to get me out taking photographs as I've been a real slacker lately.

The Great Western Railway is the main line running west from London. It passes through the town I live in. Over the last couple of years we've had to put up with bridges being closed for up to a year to be rebuilt to give enough clearance for the electric cables, roadworks while they bury the cables from the local power station to the tracks and nightime pile driving activities to install the bases for the gantries. What we are left with is a complete eyesore. Endless grey steel gantries every few yards along the line. In some places, the line was invisible in the landscape - not so now, there's no missing it from miles away.

All the photographs were taken, processed and scanned etc. today. I only took thirteen shots in total of which eight I thought were keepers. I'm showing five here, the rest are on my Flickr if you want to see them.

Film was XP-2 processed in Ilfosol 3 - a combination I haven't used before and the results look a bit like a negative soft focus effect with the blacks running into the whites. Never seen this before and I probably won't use the combination again. Camera was a self 'assembled' one made up from bits of three other cameras.

[02Pilot]

As a general fan of railways and their accompanying hardware, I must say those are some of the ugliest catenary gantries I've ever seen.

[Late Developer]

I really like the set, Peter, and I've had a look at the other 3 on Flickr and they're also extremely good.  I remember you mentioning that it's possible to develop XP2 Super in traditional chemicals and, as unusual as this combo might seem, I think the results stand up well. I'd be pleased as punch to have processed these.  That's also a very interesting looking camera - much better than a lot of "cut and shut" jobs I've seen. Excellent work.

[cs1]

I didn't know that you can develop XP2 with traditional developers. Very interesting. As for the soft focus, it's hardly noticeable in the Flickr pictures (probably due to the resolution). I really like the tonality of your photos. But I'm a fan of the XP2 anyhow. Did you expose it at ISO 400?

I like you photos, especially the strong contrast due to the sunshine. E.g. the shimmering of the train in the first photo makes it stand out really well.

Nice Frankencamera! It looks very sophisticated and has a nice individualistic touch.

[Pete_R]

Did you expose it at ISO 400?

ISO200. I tend to use it at 400 for low contrast scenes and 100 for high contrast scenes. Processing remains the same.

I like you photos, especially the strong contrast due to the sunshine.

Probably as much to do with the post processing. I visualised them as slightly dark with a high contrast so that's what I went for.

[cs1]

ISO200. I tend to use it at 400 for low contrast scenes and 100 for high contrast scenes. Processing remains the same.

I like the XP2 a lot at 100. It's very versatile film.

[MacArron]

First one is really good to me. The film you used shows every single detail of the scene, and I like the result.

And what to say about the camera...! It's a kind of Yashica FX-3 with a different front part and a beautiful Tessar attached, isn't it?

Good work.

[Pete_R]

And what to say about the camera...! It's a kind of Yashica FX-3 with a different front part and a beautiful Tessar attached, isn't it?

Externally it's a Centon K100. The chassis is from an original FX-3 and most of the operational parts are from a Yashica FX-3 Super 2000.

[astrobeck]

Wow!
Good show of photos and the camera is just great.
Indeed the train stuff is interesting, but I'm with you and others about the gantries being less than attractive. What do those guys think after putting them up I wonder?

Nice all round. 
And again, a tip of the hat on the camera.  it's very cool!
Becky