By:
On:
In: Camera Review Blogs
With: 2 Comments

I’ll have to admit, ever since I went to Europe in 2015 I’ve had the desire to add some sort of folding medium format camera to my collection. Something compact, shooting at least 6×4.5 or 6×6. And for a little while earlier this year I had my eye on a Mamiya Six (the original one, not the modern rangefinder). After a great deal of reading and searching, I realised that there were too many questions about the Mamiya Six and stopped looking. And then this beauty fell into my lap and I’m glad it did. The Ikonta 521 might not be the best folding cameraRead More →

By:
On:
In: The Canal
With: 0 Comments

Out of all communities formed along the Welland Canal, both large and small, the ones that are most important to the Canal are the ports. It’s easy to tell which communities along the Canal remain or are former terminuses or access points onto the Welland Canals as most of them carry the title Port in their name. Welland for example offered through the first two Canals access onto the feeder canal that exited at Port Maitland (which I will not be covering today, sorry). While once-thriving communities with some level of municipal independence all save Port Colborne are a part of a larger city today,Read More →

By:
On:
In: Film Review Blogs
With: 0 Comments

After last month’s debacle with FilmWashi D and the ultra-thin base, I made a point to check Z before even loading it up into the camera, thankfully, the base while thin, is a little closer to what I’m used to working with JCH Streetpan and Rollei RPX films. Like D, Z is designed for aerial surveillance specifically for the mapping of vegetation. To aid in this, the film has a near-infrared capability. While this might not have been used in spy satellites but you never know, it could have been used in spy planes? Knowing that the film has infrared capabilities, I decided to shootRead More →

By:
On:
In: Film Review Blogs
With: 0 Comments

Every so often a film stock will come up out of nowhere and surprise me, and today that film is FilmWashi “D”. Like all films that come out of FilmWashi, Washi D (as I’ll be calling it from now on) they take films out of their normal use and repurpose it for regular photographic duties. In the case of Washi D, it saw creation as a Russian surveillance film. The purpose of the film and what secrets it was designed to capture remains a mystery but because the film has the title ‘project: Sputnik’ on the label makes me think this film would be loadedRead More →

By:
On:
In: Film Review Blogs
With: 1 Comment

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 →

By:
On:
In: Tutorials
With: 5 Comments

If you have been doing home film development, then the term stand-development might have crossed your eyes. And when it comes to the process, I’m still relatively new to using stand-developing in my black and white film processing toolkit. While I’ve had some successes when it comes to handling particularly rough or even unknown film stocks, it isn’t a method for all films. So for today’s post, I went out with three different films, Ilford FP4+, Rollei Superpan 200, and Kodak TMax 400. Each shot on a different day, in different conditions, and various cameras. Then I went and soaked all three rolls in aRead More →

By:
On:
In: Photography
With: 0 Comments

Work has been a bit stressful of late and that restless feeling I had about a month into this whole mess we’re still sorting through came back. Either that or I never stopped feeling that way, and it just regressed enough to function. Thankfully I had my form of therapy still available with a lot more options than I did in April. I made a point to ensure I had three days of photography even if I only went out for a short amount of time with a camera and a roll of film. I ended up going out Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with WednesdayRead More →

By:
On:
In: Film Review Blogs
With: 7 Comments

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 →

By:
On:
In: Reviews
With: 2 Comments

The idea of a small light meter is nothing new, ever since the concept of an exposure meter that clip onto the camera through an accessory shoe (or hot shoe). When I was shooting a Barnack Leica, I used one such meter, the Voigtlander VCII. A fantastic meter, easy to use, a little restrictive at times, but never missed a beat. I don’t recall what happened to mine. It either stopped working or got lost on an adventure on in my one move. When my good friend and regular of the Toronto Film Shooters Meetup, Matt Bechberger, let me know he aimed to release hisRead More →

By:
On:
In: Photography
With: 2 Comments

I honestly can’t remember when I got this sealed box of 4×5 film. I remember getting it from my good friend and partner in photographic crime Bill Smith. Now, this was all before the great interest in Ultra-Low films and it took a lot of digging to find out anything about the film. Then I realised I was looking for the wrong number. I should have been checking out Eastman 5302. After expanding my search I found some developing formula on Flickr and decided it would be finally time to get out and check this mystery box out. It took a while to figure outRead More →