Here We Go Again...

[mike_m]

I can't be sure whether this is a memory from the time (live) or a later (maybe years later), but I have the vaguest of recollections of watching Churchill's coffin procession on a crappy old TV (405 lines, rounded edge screen, valves that kept failing [PCF 80 IIRC]).

Yes, it would certainly have been in black & white - so was my photo, taken from Parliament square just outside Westminster Hall as the coffin was taken on the gun carriage up Whitehall, then to St Paul's. N.B. The white blob on the right is not Winston's spirit ascending to heaven, but a consequence of my poor darkroom technique when developing the film!

 

[prpr]

Interesting. I think I've just about reconciled where you were standing, but it looks quite different in some respects from Streetview's cameras.
What caused the scratches? And did the dust and hairs just get in at the scanning stage?

 

[EEPhil]

The white blob on the right is not Winston's spirit ascending to heaven,

More likely to be cigar smoke.

 

[mike_m]

Interesting. I think I've just about reconciled where you were standing, but it looks quite different in some respects from Streetview's cameras.
What caused the scratches? And did the dust and hairs just get in at the scanning stage?

Yes, a lot has changed - Portcullis House being the most obvious. In the photo I'm standing on St Margaret St. pavement, leaning on the parapet that at the time did not have railings - it does now. The stepped wall in the foreground is the one that runs down from the street to the front of Westminster Hall, passing in front of what is now the Gift Shop.

I think the dust and scratches are mostly from the negatives having passed the last half-century in various shoeboxes, drawers and filing cabinets, not always in proper neg sleeves. I think there's a couple of horizontal scratches that run down the length the whole film, possibly from grit on the squeegee when drying the film, or something. I blew the negs with compressed air before scanning, but I didn't do any other cleaning.

 

[sine24]

Best thing about the coverage of ER2's passing is ....

more people realising that the monarchs saved us from imbeciles like Trump, Biden, Obama, Macron, Blair, Thatcher ....... as heads of state