Salvage part 2

 Last week I was feeling a tad miffed at the mishap with my OM-1, but as I had managed to cut the film and not damage what was left in the cassette I decided to load it into my OM-2 and go for a walk along the canal near my home. It was also a perfect opportunity to shoot it at 200 and see just how far out last weeks images were. I also fitted my Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 as I was hoping to get some good photo's of Narrowboats at Crooke just outside Wigan.

I'm well into my fourth decade as a resident of Wigan and I love the surprises this town holds if you want to explore. One of those is Crooke, a former mining community built on the banks of the Leeds Liverpool Canal just a couple of miles outside Wigan. The coal mine at Crooke Hall sent it's black diamonds to the loading pier on the Canal side and from there the coal went east to Wigan and westwards to Liverpool and beyond.

There was a pair of Coal Barges moored at Crooke on the day of my walk named Ambush and Viktoria. Both could carry 60 tons of coal along the canal from colliery to coal merchants or the local Westwood Power Station. Research tells me Ambush made its last coal run along the Leigh branch of the Leeds Liverpool Canal from Bickershaw Colliery to Westwood Power Station just outside Wigan town centre in 1972.

Both the colliery and the power station have long since been demolished and the land left to nature, but Ambush and Viktoria are still afloat many years after their retirement. I was having a lot of fun along the canal photographing the barges and after a few last shots at a nearby canal lock I ran out of film and headed home.

I decided to use the same developer as used in my last adventure with EZ400, Rodinal 1+50 for 11 minutes as per the massive dev chart. I never get tired of the antici...... pation of seeing my film come out of the tank. I was rather pleased with the negs as I hung them to dry and soon had them dried, scanned and inspected ready for this blog.

Here's a few of my images from my walk along the canal. I am sure now that last weeks images with my OM-1 were not shot at 200 iso. The images shot with my OM-2 have nice contrast with excellent detail which makes me think I may have found this films sweet spot! Yes, the sky is blown out which to be fair I am not too worried about as I was metering for the barges.

The Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 may not be the fastest lens in the Olympus Zuiko arsenal, but it certainly holds its own against its more expensive siblings. It also brought the best out of EZ400 with nice detail in my shots and developing it in Rodinal gave the film that classic grain which, if you know your film, is a dead giveaway for where the film was made. I really enjoyed this weeks photowalk and I have put all 24 images on Flickr which you can visit by clicking the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

EZ400 and OM-2 Flickr Album