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In: Between Darkness & Light
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The VCXPEX events were a great way to check out locations I usually would not see. Old industries in Ontario were few and far between and often had been restored with some adaptive reuse or so run down that it was unsafe to enter. Enter the former Hooven & Allison Rope Factory or Cordage company, depending on where you looked and who you asked. This massive 19th-century rope work factory in Xenia, Ohio, was a local attraction even though it had been burned three times. Tracking a complete and chronologically accurate history of the Hooven & Allison Cordage Company proved difficult. Mainly because the peopleRead More →

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Miranda produced a lot of excellent lenses, from wide-angle to telephoto and everything in between. The 135mm f/3.5 is an interesting addition. It might not be the best choice for portrait-length lenses, but it still works great for what it is. Don’t get me wrong, there are better and faster lenses in this category, but the 135mm f/3.5 has one thing: affordability with a lot more bang for your buck than you would expect. And while it might not be the fastest or a focal length I like (yes, I still struggle with 135mm), it works for the limited number of times I’ve used it.Read More →

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In: Film Review Blogs
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I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t be able to complete this trinity of the original Efke films. Still, a fellow film photographer came through and sent me not one, not four, but a brick of ten rolls of Efke 25, and not just in 35mm, but in 120, that’s right, we’re doing the final review in the Efke trilogy with Efke R25. Efke 25 is the slowest and hardest to handle of all the Efke films, rated nominally at ASA-25. It is based on the original line of films first released by Adox in the 1950s. This is a single-pass emulsion with highRead More →

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In: Classic Camera Revival
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Jess Beaudin first came to our attention when CBC posted an article about her use of natural materials to develop and print her photographs. So, of course, we wanted to get her on the show to talk about her work! Jess agreed and sat down with Alex to talk about anything and everything! You can find more of Jess’ work online: Web: https://jessbeaudin.ca/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570628757496 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessbeaudinmedia/ Looking for a good spot to get your gear and material fix check out Burlington Camera (Burlington, ON), Downtown Camera (Toronto, ON), Belle Arte Camera (Hamilton, ON), Pond’s FotoSource (Guleph, ON), and All Things Film (London, ON). In Quebec, PhotoRead More →

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In: Camera Tales
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The 1990s and 2000s were a weird time for film photography and film cameras. Digital was starting to arrive as a medium, and often the first digital cameras were adapted from film cameras. But there was also a push to chase nostalgia, and several companies put out what can only be described as premium options. Sure, you have the standard names like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Minolta. However, the biggest player in this push for premium is Kyocera. Kyocera had come in, purchased a couple of historic brands, Yashica and Contax, and began producing cameras and slapping these names on them. Kyocera produced cameras fromRead More →

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For many films in this series of reviews, it’s the first time I’ve tested them to this extreme. But for Ilford Ortho+, I have already done extensive stress testing on the film stock. I first shot this film in sheet film format and found that there is already a listed D-76 time with no listed speed. That resulted in one of my favourite waterfall photos, where I shot the film at ASA-6 and got some lovely results with a large-format camera on a bright day. I even repeated this process, exposing it between ASA-25 and ASA-6, and got some excellent results. So, going into thisRead More →