Back in the Summer of 2013 when APUG was the place to get your online fix of the analogue photography community, I noticed a post in the Toronto local board that there weren’t enough meetups for the film photography community. Which was at the time partly true, sure there had been a couple of FPP/APUG meetups in the area in the past, I had even helped coordinate one in 2011. But there had not been anything since. So I took it upon myself to plan these events, at least four, in a year. The first one dropped in July 2013, had a decent turnout andRead More →

When it comes to large format cameras, certain ones stand out as masters in their field. And while a camera is just a camera, and is only as good as the photographer who uses it. I’ll admit I had some trouble with the Technika; there is something to say about a fantastic tool. The Linhof Technika V is a beautiful precision piece of equipment. And while a Technical camera does not have the same freedom of movement as a monorail that is not physically possible, it comes pretty close. And while I certainly messed up in playing a bit too much with some movements, inRead More →

If there is a single piece of infrastructure that changed Canada in the early 1850s, the railroad is that single piece the spurred the Province towards a modern industrial location in the British Empire. While the Welland and Rideau Canals provided a fast link they both were tied to the waterways they were built out of. Rail, on the other hand, could cross areas where canals could not. Rail could run nearly the year-round, bridge water, and move faster. But railroads were not new in the province, having existed in some form or another since the early 1820s. Rail technology had been used in theRead More →

When I initially beta tested the Derev Pan films the one film that was missing from the test pack with the middle child, Derev Pan 200, so this is a brand new film for me. There aren’t many mid-range speed films on the market today, especially in black & white films. You have Rollei Superpan 200, Derev Pan 200, Svema Foto 200 plus Eastman Double-X. So I had no real understanding of what to expect. Grainery than most films in the Derev line, it presents a generally low to a mid-contrast classic look. The trade-off for the grain is that the film is sharp inRead More →

As you well know, I’m a huge fan of Kodak Panatomic-X and by far it is the one film I would like to see come back in some modern form. And while I can give TMax 100 a similar look, what if I could find that look I’m fond of in a modern new film? Well, I feel I can find that in CatLABS X Film 80 and sure it’s not an ASA-32 film, but what if I pulled it? I mean I got stable images out of TMax 100 at nearly a two-stop full, in this case, it’s only about a stop and aRead More →

One of the biggest things in film photography these days is taking old ‘dead stock’ and respooling it for regular photographic use, and the most recent addition to these boutique films is Street Candy ATM 400. As the name suggests, the film is aimed at street photographers (or those who identify as street photographers), and ATM means this is a former film used in surveillance cameras on Automated Teller Machines. And since most modern ATMs use digital technology to fill the need for security surveillance. While originally available only in Europe it’s been recently brought into North America through the Film Photography Project. It certainlyRead More →

Like the speed test, I ran on TMax P3200 I decided it was only fair to give Delta 3200 a fair shake as well, but to make things more interesting, I decided to run it through in Medium Format instead of 35mm. After my review last year of Delta 3200, I decided that the film responded best in Ilford Microphen. Microphen has become one of my favourite developers to push or pull processing fast films. Like the TMax speed test, I’ll shoot the film at 1600, 3200, and 6400 and develop each in Ilford Microphen. Note that while I firmly believe that Delta 3200 isRead More →

Found in a dusty warehouse, based on where the film came from, Sweeden, Lomography promoted their Berlin 400 as an iconic cinematic film. 400-Speed, Black & White, and from East Germany. Well, that certainly narrowed it down to only one film, thankfully it is one that I did have planned to review at a later date, so why not discuss it under the Lomography Brand! The film, if you haven’t already guessed is ORWO N74, which made collecting developing formulas easy. Shooting cinematic film in still cameras is nothing new, at least for me, I still love shooting Double-X for urban work, so getting intoRead More →

From a snowstorm to a downpour, it was just before 7:30 in the morning as I walked out the door to my car. The time change had not messed me up too much, and I knew the area where I was driving. However, the night before freezing rain had come through. But the temperature had gone a few degrees above the freezing mark, so I figured it was safe by this point. Everything I had with me was waterproof, I had fast film, nothing below ASA-200, and even though it was dark, I could see some light through the deep clouds on the horizon. ItRead More →

If the early days of autofocus cameras brought us VCRs, by the 1990s, the design of cameras had become far more streamlined. The 3xi belongs to the third generation of Minolta autofocus cameras but don’t get too excited; this is the cheapest, lowest range camera in the series. And believe me, it shows. Designed to run for the most part in the full auto-exposure mode with little interference from the photographer itself. These xi series cameras could use powered zoom lenses to set the focal length automatically. But to be honest, while it may look and behave like an SLR, at its heart, it isRead More →