If there’s one lens that I don’t use that much is the 135mm focal length. I shoot a tonne with my pair of Nikon 105mm lenses and the 100mm in my Maxxum system is becoming a fast favourite. But I have a pair of 135mm lens one in Nikon the other in Rokkor that just don’t get the same amount of love as the others do. And oddly enough there are plenty of other photographers out there that their lenses feel the same lack of love. Enter Dan Novack when he posted a challenge on the Negative Postive’s Podcast group on Facebook asking if anyoneRead More →

If there is a singular organisation that is synonymous with the Patriot Wars and the Upper Canada Rebellion as a whole that group is the Hunter’s Lodge. The group grew out of the Frise Chassure, a group founded by the Lower Canada Patriotes under Joseph-Louis Papineau. Papineau had been waging his rebellion against Lower Canada out of Vermont. And while Papineau saw no better success than those in the west, the use of a central group and the model of a secret society had kept the group much better aligned with the goals of their rebellion. It also attracted the attention of Charles Duncombe whoRead More →

I honestly don’t mind leaving at 6:30 in the morning, I had a two-hour drive in front of me and these days, especially on the weekend traffic, is an unknown variable. But I was Peterborough bound, having grabbed a coffee at the local Starbucks before getting on the highway. But this wasn’t going to be the average Toronto Film Shooters Meetup, we had guests this time around. I’ve been in talks with our cousin group in Kingston for a joint meetup. It would then just be a matter of finding an interesting spot in the middle of our two cities. Eventually, I settled on PeterboroughRead More →

John and Bill sit down to talk to Stephen Dowling, the man behind the website Kosmo Foto and the driving force behind bringing Kosmo Foto Mono 100 to the market. The three sit down around our interview table to discuss everything about the site, how it came to be, the man behind the site, and the reasons behind bringing Mono 100 to the market. Along with the inspiration behind the awesome Soviet Style graphics. If you haven’t visited Kosmo Foto, we certainly recommend visiting and following the awesome content. You can follow Kosmo Foto through the followings means Website – kosmofoto.com Twitter – @kosmofoto InstagramRead More →

The continuing rebellion shifted after Pelee Island, as the leadership changed and William Lyon MacKenzie separated himself while living in Rochester while out on bail from his arrest in Buffalo following the evacuation from Navy Island. The Rebel Cause fell under the leadership of the Council of Thirteen. A mixed group of Canadian and American sympathisers. However, their actions against Upper Canada and their behaviour in the American cities had forced them to seek shelter in the rural areas along the border. Charles Duncombe had been working in the east and was spreading a new secret society based on a French-Canadian society to spread theRead More →

Continuing with our love of chemistry in part two we dig into some of the older and stranger developers. While many of these are speciality they are rather common in our own chemistry cabinets and they include the likes of the alphabet soup that is HC-110, the oldest commercial developer Rodinal, and the rather toxic Pyrocat-HD. Kodak HC-110 Kodak’s HC-110 developer is a strange creature, released with little fanfare in 1962 with a small article in a photography magazine, the developer became an instant classic. It’s best known as the developer of choice for Ansel Adams. And while most Kodak Developers had the letter DRead More →

The rebellion was over, long live the rebellion. The one thing that surprised me that even after the failures of Duncombe and MacKenzie at London and Toronto and after they had fled to the United States and MacKenzie had set up his dream state, the Republic of Canada the violence did not end there and nor did the rebellion. But was the violence that made up the grossly over-named Patriot War part of the Rebellion or was it something else. The troubles that continued throughout all of 1838; I have chosen to split the troubles into three parts all held together by a common theme,Read More →

It’s the rumble in the professional jungle! Yes, I’m pitting the two mid-1990s pro bodies I have in my toolbox against each other in a friendly competition! This contest isn’t to see which is better than the other, I use and work with both cameras often side-by-side. And honestly I consider them both equally amazing cameras in my mind, I mean look at the glowing reviews I’ve given both cameras. For this little contest, I’ve set a few rules. First, this contest saw completion on the same day, shot-for-shot. Also, I set both to matrix/average metering and full Auto Exposure. In both cases, I mountedRead More →

If you’re confused at the title, don’t worry, there never was the Republic of Canada, well not in any formally recognised manner. I happened across this strange pseudo-nation while doing the initial planning stages of this project. The grand republic is the brainchild of William Lyon MacKenzie and Charles Duncombe; they desired to reshape both Upper and Lower Canada into a single country with a Constitution and Government structure similar to that in the United States of America. And while he aimed to establish his new republic through force of arms, his failure at Toronto and Duncombe’s failure in the west did little to dampenRead More →

Ektar 100 is one of my favourite colour films, and that’s saying a lot because I don’t shoot a lot of colour film. But when it comes to Ektar 100, it is the first of many ‘new’ colour films to come out of Kodak since I first started shooting film. The name itself, a historical word in the Kodak Dictionary is an acronym for Eastman Kodak TessAR the lenses produced between 1936 and 1962 and I own a 203mm Ektar which I still run on my Crown Graphic. Then it became a line of professional films rated at 25, 100, and 1600 starting in 1989,Read More →