5 Frames of Croome Panorama Tower

Fairly near where I live there is an observation tower that is under the care of the National Trust, part of the Croome estate, but because it is in the middle of a field a couple of miles away from the main house and park, it is rarely open; this year just 2 or 3 hours on four days of the year. One of those days was this month, so I decided to take a look, and I set myself the task of getting 5 images using some lenses I thought had not been used enough. I took along my Olympus OM4Ti which had a dozen frames left on a roll of Kentmere 200. The film was developed in ID-11 and scanned on an Epson V700 using auto levels.

The first two shots are the obvious ones to take. The first, the featured image, shows the tower from across the field in the distance, taken with a lens that I have had for many years but hardly ever get used because, though it’s good, it is heavy for what it does: a Tamron SP180 (180mm) f2.5. The next is a close up.

Converging verticals have been corrected in Photolab. But what next? I was expecting the top to be where I would take most shots, but the lighting was flat and it was hard to get an interesting view of the balcony itself. So I decided to try making something of the pillars and arches on the ground floor. The first is a view out, with Bredon Hill in the distance. Because it was not possible to stand back very far, I used a semi-fisheye but, because I did not like the almost circular pillars, I corrected the distortion, trying to fractionally under-correct as even the tiniest amount of over-correction was unnatural. I like the effect because it reminds me to the gates to Shinto shrines in Japan. (And yes, I know there is a tiny bit in the top right that I should have cropped or cloned out.)

The other shot was to look round the tower, giving a different perspective on the pillars.

I probably straightened the verticals in PhotoLab. But I also tried using the semi-fisheye on the same view, again correcting the distortion on the computer to give a shot that was very similar, but a less tight crop. There is also a warden using his strimmer, who unfortunately was no longer in the middle when I pressed the shutter.

Because the last two are almost the same, I decided that only the second one counted towards my five, which meant I needed another shot. Failure? Before setting out I had thought I would get at least one, and probably two shots of the spiral staircase, from top and bottom. But there two problems with that idea. From the top getting in the middle required leaning right over a ledge and either I failed to get it all in the shot, or I had my shoes at the bottom of the image. The bigger problem was the extreme contrast, blowing the highlights while leaving the shadows too dark to. Adjusting tones in Photolab gave results I did not like at all. So for the fifth shot I have cheated and am using a digital image, taken on OM-1 digital camera, this time looking up at the stairs.

As I didn’t have a tripod, and in any case, setting it up and getting the camera in the right place relative to the handrail would probably have got in the way of other visitors, I had to hand-hold, leaning on the banister, relying on the camera’s image stabilization. I decided I did not want to up the ISO and that, as its only a 7mm lens, f8 would do, which meant that it needed 2 seconds. I could not have handheld any film camera for this shot (to get the same depth of field I would have needed f11 to f16), meaning an even longer exposure.

I am happy to have used the Kentmere which I thought worked fine given that it was a very overcast day and it reminded me that I have some lenses that deserve more use than they get.

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