Images shot on Kentmere Pan 100 in the Lomography Sprocket Rocket
A few posts ago in my film photography essays archive is an account of shooting some Lomochrome Turquoise with the Rollei 35 at Redhill Marina – the place to go just outside of Nottingham for these kind of cooling-towers-and-boats images you may have seen before.
Those cooling towers are at the now decommissioned Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, and are scheduled to be pulled down sometime in 2029 or 2030.
That Lomochrome Turquoise wasn’t the only film I shot there that day, though. As you can see. Because I have these images taken on some Kentmere Pan 100 in the Lomography Sprocket Rocket too.
So why don’t we have a look at them.
I’m not going to get into much background information about Ratcliffe-on-Soar and Redhill Marina on this post. I already did that on that previous one, so there’s no point repeating myself.
And with there only being eight photographs here, or seven and a half if you count the first of the roll one like that, I’m going to keep it short.
Maybe just stick to a few things related to the process and the results.
Comparing the images here to those shot on the Lomochrome Turquoise, it’s clear to see what my method was that day. Because a lot of the images on this post and that one feature the same boats photographed from a similar angle.
Find a composition that looked like it might work, and see how it looks on a weird film but through a standard lens – that Rollei 35 with its 40mm focal length – and also see how it looks on a normal film but with panoramic sprocket hole photographs.
A decent enough little experiment, and one that had something non-normal in both instances to differentiate my results from what most other people who have shot here before have done.
Something I managed to do reasonably well with these images from Ratcliffe-on-Soar was keeping them level.
I’m a stickler for straightening my photographs when editing them, but that’s not really possible with Sprocket Rocket ones, because all you’ll end up with is diagonal lines of sprocket holes. And nobody wants that.
So if you’re doing the kind of compositions that require being level to work, like I was here, you have to get it right at the time.
While some of these are a touch off, to my eye at least, and would have been corrected slightly if shot with a normal camera, they’re generally pretty good. Even I, pedantic as I can be with stuff like that, am happy enough with them.
I like Lomography as a company, and I like that the majority of their cameras have some unique feature(s) that make them interesting to play with. Yes the quality can be lacking but that’s all part of it.
That could be build quality, and it could also be image quality, if technical perfection is how you’re measuring that.
I think the plastic lens on Sprocket Rocket is plenty sharp enough for what you’re likely to be doing with it. No problem here with that.
I’ve not had this issue before though, with the film burn alongside the sprocket holes. It’s fine though. I don’t know how it’s happened, but I don’t really care.
It’s all part of the Sprocket Rocket game.
Wrapping up from Ratcliffe-on-Soar
There’s that half a photo, first of the roll shot I mentioned earlier.
And with that, we’re nearly done here. More information about this place – Redhill Marina and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station – can be found on the other blog post from this day, when I shot that Lomochrome Turquoise film there.
That one also includes some details on the Megawatt Valley project that I stumbled on just after my day shooting here, and that I was lucky enough to get one of my images included in an exhibition on launch day.
I recommend you go see what that is all about if nothing else.
I’ll be honest here too. It took me a little while to get these scans back and ready to publish. By the time I had them, the Megawatt Valley exhibition was over.
But if I could have, I might have gone with one of these instead of a Lomochrome Turquoise one. 🙂
If you liked these images featuring the cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar and want more adventures illustrated with film photography, why not have a look at some of these:
And if you think others will find this post worth a read, help them find it by giving it a share 😀
