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  #11  
Old 10th May 2020, 03:09 PM
John King John King is offline
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Default Causey Arch

Thank you for your comments - very much appreciated.

The best thing about it is, if you go down to the lower levels there is only very rarely anyone else around which is good at present. If you are disabled then really it is a no go area because the paths are steep and very narrow in places.

Yes I am lucky. Since the mining industry disappeared around 1986 (The last deep mine closed then) there are signs of dereliction and decay all over if you know what to look for all 'left overs' from the industrial age. Since I have been volunteering at the Bowes Mining and Railway Museum as their photographer and tour guide and it has been a very steep learning curve, packing all the knowledge of what they did and when.

My most striking information I learned about was about the mine owners and how mean they were to the workers. If they occupied a miners workers house with their family and he was killed or injured (there were many hundreds) the owners 'heavies' were round the next day and kicked the families out. The only place to go was the workhouse and destitution.

I have masses of pictures taken inside the museum, some which are not places the public get to so I will dig them out and put them up here.
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  #12  
Old 10th May 2020, 04:03 PM
big paul big paul is offline
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here is one I took of the wife feeding a horse grass ,was taken on a phase one 645af and a mamiya 300mm apo AF lens ,Ilford delta 100 printed on Ilford FB grade 2 paper and scanned badly...


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  #13  
Old 11th May 2020, 08:50 AM
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photomi7ch photomi7ch is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by big paul View Post
here is one I took of the wife feeding a horse grass ,was taken on a phase one 645af and a mamiya 300mm apo AF lens ,Ilford delta 100 printed on Ilford FB grade 2 paper and scanned badly...


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It is a nice photograph no matter how it was scanned
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  #14  
Old 11th May 2020, 09:03 PM
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skellum skellum is offline
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Hi Paul-
That lens does a fine job of dropping the backgound out of focus.
What do you think of the out of focus areas? Quite 'swirly' to my eye, which some people on the Large Format Forum lust after.
Would be interted to see what it looks like in colour if you ever do any.
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  #15  
Old 11th May 2020, 11:31 PM
big paul big paul is offline
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sorry skellum but I have not taken colour for a few years now and never have taken 120 colour film ,so its all black and white for me . yes that lens gives a picture a great background ,I bought for a reasonable price but now the prices have shot up on anything medium format especially anything you can get a digital back for .
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  #16  
Old 12th May 2020, 05:12 PM
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Rob Archer Rob Archer is offline
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I thought I knew the area around my home pretty well as I've lived here for 20 years but I've just discovered and area that used to be a boatyard only about 200m away! I knew it was there but it's always been behind a high, barbed wire fence which has now decayed and broken. It's full of old bits of metal and concrete and I've found some interesting compositions. I've recently treated myself to a 50mm f3.5 macro lens for my Olympus OM kit and there's no shortage of close-up potential.
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  #17  
Old 12th May 2020, 05:23 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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Rob, that sounds good. Do you find the macro lens is sharper than the normal 50mm ? Or does it just focus closer?

Ala
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  #18  
Old 12th May 2020, 08:06 PM
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Rob Archer Rob Archer is offline
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Rob, that sounds good. Do you find the macro lens is sharper than the normal 50mm ? Or does it just focus closer?

Ala
Both! I bought it on a whim as it was a good BIN price on the auction site. I'm not normally a fan of 50mm lenses but this one has hardly been off the camera since I got it. It focuses down to about 20cm and out to infinity and it's pin sharp all the way. It's slightly darker to focus through than the standard OM 50mm 1.8 but I don't notice it. Another thing I like about it is that the front element is very inset and won't need either a protective filter or a lens hood in use. It came with a 25mm extension tube which lets it focus down to gnats nostril level! I'm not really into the serious macro stuff though and have been photographing dandelions and rust locks. I'll put a couple in my 'lockdown prints' album when they're dry.
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  #19  
Old 12th May 2020, 09:31 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Archer View Post
Both! I bought it on a whim as it was a good BIN price on the auction site. I'm not normally a fan of 50mm lenses but this one has hardly been off the camera since I got it. It focuses down to about 20cm and out to infinity and it's pin sharp all the way. It's slightly darker to focus through than the standard OM 50mm 1.8 but I don't notice it. Another thing I like about it is that the front element is very inset and won't need either a protective filter or a lens hood in use. It came with a 25mm extension tube which lets it focus down to gnats nostril level! I'm not really into the serious macro stuff though and have been photographing dandelions and rust locks. I'll put a couple in my 'lockdown prints' album when they're dry.
Sounds like you've got something good there Rob.

Alan
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  #20  
Old 12th May 2020, 09:56 PM
John King John King is offline
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Default Bowes Railway and mining Museum

I have had a job to sort out the wood from the chaff because most of my pictures are taken with D++&$$lL and I had to find those which were on negatives.

A brief history Lesson! The mines around this area were mostly owned by a consortium of 4 extremely rich businessmen one of whom was called John Bowes (His father was one of those who contracted the building of the Causey Arch) They constructed a railway line linking most of their main collieries from a small town in the west called Dipton and 800 feet above sea level to the River Tyne at Jarrow. (Remember the Jarrow marches?). Collectively they were reputed to be the 4 richest men in the civilised world at the time. John Bowes was an ancestor of the late Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

This line was a gnats whisker over 15 miles long, but from the 800 feet it gradually descended passing through what is now the Tanfield Railway where shortly afterwards the descent steepened from about 1 in 200 to an average of 1 in 40 right to the same level as the River Team . This is the river that passes under Causey Arch It then climbed up again to around 650 feet to a point where the museum is. It then dropped down again to sea level at Jarrow in just 4 miles. The operation was carried out by a mixture of steam locomotives Stationary steam engines and 2 sections which were gravity operated where the loaded wagons were hauled up and descended again by a rope system. The steepest section of the line was a mind boggling 1 in 14!

There you have it is a very small nutshell! Now the pictures.

1.The one above the repair shop was difficult to get. I had to climb a very wobbly steel ladder with a safety harness I was about 35 feet above the floor.
2.The restoration was proceeding very slowly on this wagon which is known to be over 100 yrs old when it was retired in 1980. The wood, solid oak just crumbled between finger a thumb. A complete 12'9" main beam would cost close on £1300 plus vat it it were to be replaced. Instead it is simply patched up.
3.These special bolts are from a wagon axle box and the originals had to be cut off, but they managed to save the nuts and our tame engineer made a full set of 4. They are about 11/4" wide and 5 inches long.
4. This is the only section of the gravity rope operated system existing today . The main wheel is 14' in diameter and wound a continuous 1.5 inch rope to lower the full wagons downhill for 1.25 miles and the heavier wagons going down pulled the empties back up the hill. The wheel is in two parts. The lower section carried the steel cable whoilst the upper half was a massive brake to slow the descent.
5. This is inside the partially restored cabin where a workman would operate a brake on the big wheel so that the descent was kept to around 11 feet per second. The dial in the roof level showed the actual speed.
6.This odd shaped hump is called a 'Kip' and all wagons coming up the bank had to pass over the top and the rope was detached and they ran free into the yard where they came to a stop naturally. Another rope was fastened to the front then the train carried on back up to the end of the line. At it's peak 8 trains an hour, 24 hours a day passed each way with about 110 tones of coal. (Pictures 4 and 5 are in the wrong order - sorry)
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Last edited by John King; 12th May 2020 at 10:11 PM. Reason: change of text
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