It was way too chilly to be standing beside this tractor in the penetrating Donegal drizzle while fiddling about with long exposures on my Canon EOS 50, something I’d be less inclined to do with a modern digital camera, weather sealed or not. Such had been the ups and downs of life back then (and further downs just a few years later), it was fourteen years before I got around to scanning and processing this Fujifilm Reala negative. It was shot in early November 2004.

I used a Plustek 8100 scanner and Silverfast software to create the 18MP TIFF which I then brought into ON1 for black and white processing. Although it’s tempting to process for ideal results during the scanning stage, it’s best to concentrate on getting as wide a range of tones as possible and to avoid distinct colour casts that will be hard to correct later. There are a daunting range of tonal and colour controls in Silverfast and it’s all too easy to get bogged down at the scanning stage rather than making proper use of a fully-equipped software package such as ON1 Photo RAW, or whatever you prefer.

There was a painted ignition switch and enough power to turn this old lady over, but I didn’t risk it. I didn’t fancy chasing it down the lane. Someone had given it a ruthless paint job – especially the front wheels – perhaps in an attempt to make it some kind of garden ornament for visiting tourists. That was one reason why I converted it to black and white. Unlike the top shot, I won’t be framing this one.