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Sheffield History - Then and Now Photo Thread


DaveH

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Leopold_St_then_now.jpg

 

OK so I got the idea off SteveHB in the recent development strand when he put my panorama of Sheffield taken from the bottom of Norfolk Park in 2003 with his more recent picture taken from almost the same spot in 2008, I was amazed at how different the 2 views were.

I have been using some of my old shots of Sheffield in other forums and threads and I thought I would couple some of them up with more recent shots of the same scene. To start us off here is one of Leopold Street with the Wilson Peck / H.L. Brown building prominent. The 2 halves of the picture are dated 1973 and 2008. Same place, 35 years apart. If anyone else has old photos and a current interest in local photography I would love to see more picture pairs like this. Why not post them here!

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As its getting near to Christmas here is another one. The top of Pinstone Street looking down towards the Moor in both 1969 and 2008 (39 years apart!). I have not posted either of these pictures before and I put these together as they both show the Sheffield Christmas Illuminations. They don't seem to be as good as they used to, either in quality or quantity. The lights used to spread all the way across town, it was a good night out going to see them. Today they are much fewer in number, and those banner lights across the street in the more recent picture don't look as impressive as those giant crowns in the older one.

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This one of the Moor took a bit of doing, now that the moor has trees, bandstands and stalls in the middle of what was once a road full of cars only the Debenhams building marks these 2 views out as being the same place.

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Great stuff ! What year do you estimate for the top one ?

I have already posted the top one before in a thread on the Moor (a popular shopping district) but the quality was not as good before I changed my scanner.

As I took the pictures myself I can give you an exact date, it was taken in 1973. The lower one of course is 2008.

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So here are 2 picture I took of Neepsend gas works from the south side of the river Don. The pictures are dated 1974 and 2007. They are not quite from the same location due to the total change this area has undergone, from an industrial centre to an area of total devastation and neglect.

The gasometer which dominates both pictures is the same one (Neepsend gas works??). There were several steel works in front of it but the one which was chosen as the subject of the 1974 picture was Sheffield Rolling Mills, still working at the time and interestingly still rolling steel by hand,- a very hot, dirty and dangerous occupation!

A third of a century later and almost all the steel works in this area, including SRM, have gone.

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Guest plain talker

Great stuff ! What year do you estimate for the top one ?

Roberts brothers still has a sign (see just above the lady in the foreground with the white rain-mac on. Debenhams is Debenhams, and not Pauldens, and the traffic is still free-flowing along the moor itself.

I'd hazard a guess at about 1975 or thereabouts.

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Roberts brothers still has a sign (see just above the lady in the foreground with the white rain-mac on. Debenhams is Debenhams, and not Pauldens, and the traffic is still free-flowing along the moor itself.

I'd hazard a guess at about 1975 or thereabouts.

Great detective work plain talker.

See my post #6 above for the answer. (it was taken in May 1973)

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Guest plain talker

Great detective work plain talker.

See my post #6 above for the answer. (it was taken in May 1973)

*Smiles broadly*, so I wasn't too far out in my "Guesstimate" (I hadn't seen your reply, BTW)

Not bad for an "old'un" eh? :D

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This is a fantastic idea and one that I used for my Full Monty site - http://montymania.co.uk/site/index.php/The...-Locations.html

On the montymania site I tried to get the exact position of 'then' and 'now' the same

Trying my best admin, but with over 30 years between my initial photos and the ones I am taking now its not always possible to get the exact same location because,

1) They may have built something else on the original point of phototaking making it inaccessible

2) They may have put something between the point of phototaking and the main view spoiling the view, my picture of Debenhams on the Moor is an example of this.

3) After 30 odd years I just may be too old to remember where I was when I took the first photograph

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Guest carlie167

Here is one of the old Goodwin Fountain, HL Brown, and Wilson Peck. It was taken in 1980 and sorry its not very clear but if anyone wants to have a dabble at improving it then dabble away.

The second one was taken today on one of our mooches round town.

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Here is one of the old Goodwin Fountain, HL Brown, and Wilson Peck. It was taken in 1980 and sorry its not very clear but if anyone wants to have a dabble at improving it then dabble away.

The second one was taken today on one of our mooches round town.

I can't resist a dabble ... lol

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Guest plain talker

I can't resist a dabble ... lol

OOOh wow! much improved! I can even see the one o'clock time signal hooter on the Jewellers! I can't believe the difference!

As an Aside, I've got a photo that was similarly tainted with a purple (ok, ok magenta) cast... Is it possible to help me clean it up somehow? It's just a family group, of me and my sisters in my parents' garden, thirty years ago.

(PS, what causes that magenta cast on the pictures?)

PT

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OOOh wow! much improved! I can even see the one o'clock time signal hooter on the Jewellers! I can't believe the difference!

As an Aside, I've got a photo that was similarly tainted with a purple (ok, ok magenta) cast... Is it possible to help me clean it up somehow? It's just a family group, of me and my sisters in my parents' garden, thirty years ago.

(PS, what causes that magenta cast on the pictures?)

PT

Hi PT,

If you want to make you're photo public you can post it in this Topic,

otherwise you can send it to me via PM

(I have no idea what causes that cast in photographs)

DaveH should know, he's the photos off film man

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Guest carlie167

More dabbleing

Thanks Steve, it looks much better and thanks also for putting them side by side. Its easier to compare the two views. I knew there would be someone to help. :)

A lot of my old photos have gone like this and I have no idea why, but I still think its worth posting them, cos it gives an idea of how things have changed.

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A lot of my old photos have gone like this and I have no idea why, but I still think its worth posting them, cos it gives an idea of how things have changed.

I have a few old photos that have gone the same way,

maybe it's something to do with the ink or photo paper breaking down over the years

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Guest carlie167

Thanks Steve, it looks much better and thanks also for putting them side by side. Its easier to compare the two views. I knew there would be someone to help. :)

A lot of my old photos have gone like this and I have no idea why, but I still think its worth posting them, cos it gives an idea of how things have changed.

Just off topic, did you stitch the two pics together and how do you clean up a photo?

Im sure people would be interested, unless its a trade secret!! :P

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Guest plain talker

I have a few old photos that have gone the same way,

maybe it's something to do with the ink or photo paper breaking down over the years

I thought it was perhaps the actual film (it's from a 110 0r 126 cartridge I forget which,) that had perhaps been left too long before processing, and that the chemicals in the celluloid (or whatever the film is made of) had deteriorated, as the magenta cast has been on the picture ever since since it was processed.

anyway, sorry, back on topic! :unsure: :(

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I thought it was perhaps the actual film (it's from a 110 0r 126 cartridge I forget which,) that had perhaps been left too long before processing, and that the chemicals in the celluloid (or whatever the film is made of) had deteriorated, as the magenta cast has been on the picture ever since since it was processed.

anyway, sorry, back on topic! :unsure::(

An off topic answer is.

I can't even remember if my photos looked OK or had any color cast,

when I first viewed them thirty odd years ago

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I have a few old photos that have gone the same way,

maybe it's something to do with the ink or photo paper breaking down over the years

It is the chemicals in the film, but it tends on the type and manufacturer of the film as to the exact way in which it changes.

Look at some old movies on TV that were made in the 1960's 70's. Technicolour tends to age in the red layers turning them more brown but also more intense and this frequently casts a colour mask into the other colours altering their tone.

Fortunately this doesn't happen with digital imaging so we wont have this problem in another 30 years when todays snapshots become tomorrows historical gems.

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OOOh wow! much improved! I can even see the one o'clock time signal hooter on the Jewellers! I can't believe the difference!

As an Aside, I've got a photo that was similarly tainted with a purple (ok, ok magenta) cast... Is it possible to help me clean it up somehow? It's just a family group, of me and my sisters in my parents' garden, thirty years ago.

(PS, what causes that magenta cast on the pictures?)

PT

Most photo editing software will allow you to clean up a picture with incorrect colour balance.

Most have 3 sliders to alter RGB levels (Red Green Blue =primary colours). As magenta is a secondary colour made by mixing red and blue it should be fairly simple to remove a magenta cast by either reducing the red + blue levels, or more simply by increasing the green.

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Just off topic, did you stitch the two pics together and how do you clean up a photo?

Im sure people would be interested, unless its a trade secret!! :P

Do you mean "stitch the pictures together", - join 2 overlapping pictures into one continuous panorama or do you mean just putting 2 images, which may be totally different side by side and then making it become 1 picture with 2 halves to it?

All the pictures in the "Then & Now" thread are of the second type, just 2 pictures side by side made into 1

I achieved this effect using Serif PagePlus (earlier versions often offered free on CD's with magazines)

I imported both images into a PagePlus page and placed them side by side and scaled them as I wanted the final image to look. At the stage the 2 images are seperate OBJECTS. You can then lock the objects, this joins them togetjher and finally instead of saving the page (which would save as a PagePlus publication) EXPORT as a picture (JPG) to generate the desired double picture.

Stitching pictures together properly so that you can't see the join requires special software but Serif make one called PanoramaPlus which again can be picked up free or very cheaply.

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