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The province that we know of as Ontario today looked a lot different some two hundred years in the past. There were no superhighways, factory outlets, or any major population centre every hour along the road. Trips were measured in days, not hours, and unless you were wealthy and in the merchant class, you rarely left your home settlement. The major cities numbered populations in the hundreds maybe thousands if lucky. And in Upper Canada (Ontario) the major centres were York (Toronto), Niagara (Niagara-On-The-Lake), and Kingston. The first major push to bring new immigrants into the backwater of Upper Canada was underway after the Anglo-AmericanRead More →

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If you mention the Welland Canal today many people will think of the massive shipping channel cutting across the Niagara Penisula, an artificial river you see from the Garden City Skyway that carries the QEW over the top the channel. Part of an elaborate and technologically advanced highway and major trade corridor from the Atlantic Ocean to the northernmost Great Lakes. The Canal has humble beginnings. Since the earliest days of human settlement in the Niagara Regions, the major transit between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie has been the Niagara River. Even the first peoples realised they required a long portage as the great falls,Read More →

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If there is a single lens within the manual focus Nikon catalogue with iconic status, it is the 105mm f/2.5. National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry used one to capture the stunning portrait of Sharbat Gula that caught the world’s attention. You may know her better as “The Afgan Girl.” It is a highly sought after, near-perfect quality lens that has changed little since its introduction. I got my copy of the lens from a member of my home church who gave me her grandfather’s press photographer kit which included the Nikon F3, a 50/1.4, 28/2.8, 105/2.5, and 135/2.8. I still have almost all those lensesRead More →

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While the idea of cutting a channel to safely carry cargo and people across the Niagara Penisula was not a new one by the time William Hamilton Merritt came along and pushed the idea forward to completion, Merritt is the one credited with the concept. William’s father, Thomas Merritt served under Sir John Graves Simcoe in the Queen’s Rangers during the American Revolution. After the war ended Thomas and his wife Catharine Hamilton settled in Saint Johns, New Brunswick for some time. But the call of home beckoned and the two returned to Bedford, New York. In Bedford, on the 3rd of July 1795 thatRead More →

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When it comes to Film Washi, I remained initially unsure of hopping onto the wagon of the world’s littlest film company. While some of their initial offerings were paper-based, they began to expand into traditionally based film stocks. Film Washi Type “S” or Washi S as I’ll be calling the film from now on, is not designed for pictorial use at all, even titles or special effects. Washi S is designed for optical recording of sound. Which as you may have already through will produce a high-contrast image. But I will say one thing I am impressed that I got good photos out of theRead More →

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Earlier this year I completed the second major historical photographic project on the Confederation of Canada and the events and places that lead up to the joining of four British Provinces in British North America into the Dominion of Canada in 1867. Over the course of that project, I came across many events and locations that inspired me to try and tell the deeper story. Of course, I couldn’t tell every story so instead, I selected two that I felt I couldn’t tell the whole story due to the timeline for the project ending in 1867. One of these is the railroad through Ontario theRead More →

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One thing that I enjoyed about the Sheet film version of this film (When it was called Ilford Ortho Copy Plus) is that some developer/time combinations had no film speed listed so in some cases I shot the stuff as low as ASA-6. So here I decided to test the roll film in the same way. And you know what? It worked! I selected five scenes and shot every scene three times, at ASA-25 (left), ASA-12 (middle), and ASA-6 (right) and processed them all D-76 (1+1). How did I go about making these frames? I used my Pentax Spotmeter V, in a couple of theRead More →

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When it comes to 200-Speed films, I don’t have the best view, and usually end up with decent results (Rollei Superpan 200), other times I dislike them entirely. When it comes to Ilford’s offering, SFX 200, it goes in a slightly different direction. See, I have shot SFX a lot more than I initially thought, but it never stuck too much into my film supply mostly because if I need to shoot a 200-Speed film, I’m more likely to pull a 400-Speed film (Tri-X or Fomapan 400) or push a 100-Speed film (TMax 100). See, SFX is fun in the sense that it has anRead More →

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It’s a rumble in the electric jungle! Last month I pitted Olympus and Nikon against each other with their small-format mechanical options, the Olympus OM-1n and the Nikon FM. This month I decided to test the automatic versions of these compact cameras, the Olympus OM-2n and Nikon FE. Like their mechanical cousins, both cameras were built during the rise in the use of electronics in cameras that came in the late 1970s. Now here we have a significant difference in metering as both use a different system, and in this case, both cameras have functioning meters. Again this isn’t to tell you which camera isRead More →

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While Ortho 80 Plus might appear to be a new film, it isn’t a new film. I’m surprised I missed reviewing the film earlier in this series. I skipped over a film I had shot in the past for a good two years. And thinking back that doesn’t surprise me; the film never made much of an impact. But also the film was, until recently, only available in 4×5. But I also only shot a single box of the stuff back in 2014. The results were excellent, and it was the first time shooting an ultra-low ISO film and one that had no set filmRead More →