THE Rockwood pic

A place near and dear to my family's heart.

Image

• Nikon L35 AD2
• Illford Delta 100
• Ungraded

Story

Took the L35 out for a spin in the golden hour at one of the Halton County Radial Railways' ice cream nights after work. The golden tones don't look so gold when not shot on Kodak Gold, but Delta 100 still shines, and I especially love the way the highlights halate (more to follow on that) on some of these images.

This place has been a part of my life, if even from a distance for my entire life, and my dad's life and his dad before him. My dad taking me here as a child to volunteer at various points, I think, is what sparked my interest in transit and trains.

The halation

While not related to Rockwood in any way, I want to share a photo from the same roll. Note the Bloom on the Highlights. When trying to get to the bottom of this, I shot a message to Ryan @ https://pandaplush.ca/ (he did a fantastic job developing these) His best guess was the inferior anti-halation backing layer present on most B/W film. Compared to colour, it will always be worse. However, I didn't think this was the whole story. See, I have shot plenty of B/W, much cheaper rolls of B/W and never experienced such a thing.

ENTER veil flaring. If you have ever heard someone saying a lens is "high contrast" this is likely one of the elements they are referring to. Not all lenses are created equal, and their designs or impurities can impart artifacts such as this on the final image.

My work colleagues know me as the bloom guy for my overuse of the glare node in Blender's compositing workspace. But it's not something I have been able to reliably create in analogue photography. As I work through my second roll on the L35's fixed lens, I hope to uncover more of the mystery here and lock down a formula for beautiful glow every time.

BONUS Round

Eve and I took a trip to Elmira on the Waterloo Central's Heritage Hopper. A Fantastic commuter service that in theory, you could arrive to from anywhere. Toronto Union Station -> Kitchener GO, ION LRT -> Northfield Station, Heritage Hopper -> Elmira Chemical Plant (yep, that's the final station).

This is very cool in theory, although in practice there isn't a whole lot to do in Elmira sans the Maple Syrup festival. Would be a fun adventure to get to that festival from Toronto!

Adieu

Reach out if you have Halation tips. I would love to hear them.