Scarborough scenes

I thought I’d drop in a whole bunch of pictures today, all taken while in Scarborough a few weeks ago. Scarborough rose to prominence as a spa town where it’s popularity led to visitors from London and other parts of the country making use of its facilities. The actual discovery of the spa waters took place in the 17th century, but the resort bloomed with the coming of the railways in the mid 19th century.

The town spans a north and south bay, seperated by a headland atop which stands the ruins of a medieval castle. The south bay is the more commecrcial of the two and is where the majority of the tourist facilities lie, while the north bay is quieter (although still with plenty of attractions, including Peasholm Park where mock naval battles are carried out on the boating lake). All the photos here were taken in and around the south bay.

Our visit took place on the first day of a three day trip to the region when we stayed near Whitby a little further up the coast.

Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 28 July 2022.

Time Lords at the seaside

I guess even Doctor Who enjoys a day out at the coast every now and then. This police call box in Scarborough is grade II listed and still sits in (or at least very close to) its original location.

Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 28 July 2022.

Joke shop

This joke shop in Scarborough has been there for a long time, since 1996 in fact. I only discovered this today and it came as a bit of a surprise as, if I’d been pressed, I’d have said it had been there for much longer. I was certain that it was there when I used to visit the town on coach trips back in the 1970s and 80s, but apparently not. Maybe there was another joke shop there (or close by) before that, or perhaps I’d just gotten my memories in a twist soewhere along the way.

The yellow and red of the shop frontage have popped nicely on the Colorplus film, despite the day being somewhat dull and overcast. It’s certainly fared better than the Portra 800 I shot under similar conditions (of which you will see some results in the coming week or so).

Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 28 July 2022.

Fish & chips

This is where my wife and I got some lunch when we visited Scarborough at the end of July. We’ve always used another chippy on past visits – the Lifeboat Chippy – further down this road at the bottom of the hill as they do very nice fish and chips, but as we were already halfway up the hill when lunchtime arrived, and as we were walking in the opposite direction to the other shop, we decided to give this one a go. We didn’t have any chips as we’d had breakfast sandwiches earlier at the start of the journey and were still feeling a little full, so both of us opted for fish only. The fish was pretty good and I managed to eat it without being attacked by gulls!

Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 28 July 2022.

Photography is fun(icular)

Yesterday’s photo had the Grand Hotel in the background and here it is again, albeit much closer this time, providing the brick backdrop to the funicular station.

The funicular railway here was built almost 15 years after the hotel, opening to passengers in 1881, and it still serves residents and visitors to this day. There were originally a total of five funicular railways at the resort, but there are only two still in service today: the one here (the Central Tramway), and another on the south cliffs (aptly named the South Cliff Lift). Another between these two (the Saint Nicholas Cliff Lift, just the other side of the Grand Hotel) is still in place, but the bottom station is now an ice-cream parlour while the two carriages are fixed in place at the top of the incline and make up the Saint Nicholas Cafe.

The other two were in the North Bay area of the town. The North Bay Cliff Lift was closed in 1996 and has been dismantled and placed in storage, while the Queen’s Parade Cliff Lift appears to have had a somewhat ill-fated lifespan, being subject to runaway cars, accidents and mechanical failures until a landslide eventually caused it to close for good in 1887, just nine years after it opened.

There are various meandering pathways to and from the seafront for those who don’t wish to ride in style (or some seriously imposing sets of steps for those of a sturdy disposition!).

Pentax Espio 140M & Kodak Colorplus.

Taken on 13 July 2019

Scarborough harbour

Following on from yesterday’s photo of the lobster pots, here’s the same location from a different point of view – this time a little further north up the shore. This was taken on a roll of Colorplus that was in the camera before I switched over to the Superia 100 that I used for yesterday’s shot.

I don’t live particularly close to the coast (although that’s probably not saying that much in the UK where it’s never more than about 70 miles to the sea (as the crow flies at least), so enjoy grabbing photos when I get the chance to visit.

The large building at the upper left of the frame is the Grand Hotel which, when it opened in 1867 was the largest in Europe. When viewed from above, it can be seen to be in the shape of a letter V, a tribute to Queen Victoria.

Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).

Taken on 13 July 2019

Lobster pots

There are heaps of lobster and crab pots on the harbour side at Scarborough (as, no doubt, there are at many fishing towns and villages around the British coast). There are probably a uncountable number of shots to take of these devices on any given day – the geometry of ropes, the rust of the metal, the tangles of seaweed, and the crusts of barnacles mean that there is no shortage of interest there for the inquisitive eye. You do, obviously, have to put up the a strong fishy smell in order to get your shot, but that just enhances the atmosphere (both literally and figuratively) and puts you in a proper frame of mind.

Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).

Taken on 13 July 2019

Baywatch

Ok, so you’d be unlikely to see The Hoff or Pamela Anderson here in Scarborough, even twenty-five years ago, but it’s all the same thing really, isn’t it? Well, maybe without the L.A. glamour, hot weather, and crime-fighting shenanigans.

Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).

Taken on 13 July 2019

Activate panorama mode

The Pentax Espio 140M that I bought for the princely sum of £1 at the steam rally the other week seems to work ok. It’s sharp (although maybe not quite as sharp as the Canon Sure Shot’s I own), and is very compact. The lens still seems pretty decent even when zoomed, and it has a range of metering and focussing modes that neither of my Sure Shot’s have.

It also has a panorama mode. At last, I can get those Hasselblad X-Pan type shots I always dreamed of. Well, kinda. Panorama mode here, like many other 35mm compacts with the feature, is actually achieved by way of a mask that blocks part of the frame, so all you’re really getting is a standard 35mm shot but with big black bars obscuring the top and bottom of the image. The same mask is visible in the viewfinder when the setting is activated, which does make composing the shots straightforward.

While it won’t give the resolution that an X-Pan (or a medium format camera with 35mm back) will provide, the results aren’t too bad, even if they could easily be achieved with any other camera by just cropping your image.

So, without further ado, here are four panoramas taken with the camera. Can you guess which two are actually just crops of a full 35mm frame done in Lightroom because I’d badly composed the images in-camera? 🙂

Pentax Espio 140M & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008).

Taken on 13 July 2019