I know that place, I muttered to myself while watching season 2 of Star Trek Discovery. The tell-tale support pillars were instantly familiar to me, as I had seen them many times before; there was no doubt that those were the generator supports from the massive Richard L. Hearn Thermal Generating Station in Toronto’s Portlands. I knew that Discovery filmed in Ontario and the GTHA (Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area), having seen the white church from Balls Falls and the Niagara Escarpment near Milton, all featured in both Season 1 and 2 of the then-latest Star Trek series. Hearn was my first extensive exploration and one thatRead More →

Well, here we are at the start of a new year and looking back at last year’s outstanding Frugal Film Project! I had a lot more fun with this project, and it helped nurture my soft spot for consumer 1990s/2000s SLRs. It’s funny; I never saw these as viable cameras before, yet they have a beautiful charm. You don’t have to worry too much because they can be a dime a dozen. Plus, they work with many lenses that most people use with their other autofocus systems. Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Minolta (Sony) all have lenses that work on both digital (full-frame) and 35mm bodies.Read More →

But wait, don’t I already have this lens? I do, after a fashion, of course. Suppose there is a single lens that changed my work as a photographer, especially within my urban exploration work. In that case, it is the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G, a lens that was a bit limited on my D300 but came into its power on the F5 and D750. But let’s admit it; the 14-24/2.8G is a heavy and big lens. I knew in the back of my mind that Nikon had several wide-angle lenses, but it was a chance that a fellow podcaster who picked this lens up for herRead More →

Within the film photography community, the OM-System, specifically the Zuiko lenses, are held in high regard with good reason. The Olympus OM-1 is a stunning mechanical SLR perfect for beginners, and the sophisticated metering system on the OM-2 is brilliant. Even cameras like the OM-3 and the OM-4 are excellent replacements for the original two. But an entire subset of the OM-System often takes a backseat, the double-digit consumer models. As much a part of the OM-system as the single-digit ones, often holding some of the same technology. One such example is the original consumer model, the OM-10. The OM-10 was on my hit listRead More →

There’s always another developer out there to try out, and every time I start to wonder when I’ll need to wind down these reviews, another one pops up. In the case of Fotospeed FD10, I saw it on an Instagram story from a fellow film photographer and started to hunt it down. There are two versions of FD10 out there, Fotospeed and Berspeed; I’m not sure which company made the developer originally or what the developer was made for. But from what I’ve seen online, this is an excellent general-purpose developer for small-scale to large-volume processing. Technical Details Manufacturer: Fotospeed Name: Film Developer FD10 PrimaryRead More →

While the Mark 1 Intrepid is long obsolete, it was a fantastic camera for the era in which it was produced. It became the foundation of a resurgence in modern large-format camera creation, not only from the folks at Intrepid. And while this camera is long gone, it certainly left an impression on me and my photography. This camera was designed to make large format affordable and modern construction. And it certainly made that dream a reality. Was the camera perfect? Far from it, I had many problems with this camera, but for what it was and what it cost, it made a large format,Read More →

I’ll admit, I love a good exotic film developer that can develop any film to their ideal conditions. But lets be honest here, some of these developers are expensive, hard to acquire and require rigorous attention to detail to make them work perfectly. And often are so fine tuned they will only work on a handful of film stocks that a also difficult to come by. Sometimes you want a developer that will do its job and nothing more than that. It doesn’t have to be fancy, compensate for over or under exposure. Produce ultra-fine grain, or enhance tonality and edge sharpness. Rather than presentRead More →

The city of Toronto offers many photographic opportunities, and doing a general Toronto post would be incredibly difficult. So instead, I will try to break it down into bite-sized pieces of history. So having to go into the city for an appointment at Sick Kids and being close to my birthday, we all headed out for a lovely walk over to one of the best examples of Victorian-era industries that survived in the city, the Distillery District. The history of the creation of alcohol dates back to the earliest parts of human history, but distilling spirit alcohol is something a little newer. First recorded inRead More →

If you’re thinking, haven’t you already reviewed this film stock? Well, you would be right after a fashion. While CineStill 800T is based on Vision3 500T, it is a version that has been under-exposed by a little under one-stop and had the remjet protective layer stripped away. This is the real deal; released in 2007, Eastman Vision3 5219 500T is a fast tungsten balanced film designed for use under artificial light, specifically those that produce light at the temperature of 3200K. It can also be used in daylight and produces, unfiltered, a blue tinge giving an almost day-for-night look. Of course, you can compensate forRead More →

If there is a single classic film emulsion that kept Polaroid Pack Film cameras going well after the demise of the original Polaroid company, that film is FP-100c. And while the film is no longer available today, it is the film stock that made me turn my head and start looking for Type-100 Polaroid cameras ever since receiving a ColorPack-II from the excellent Michael Raso and the Film Photography Project. FP-100c is the same film that continued the tradition of Polaroid Type-100 pack film that you shoot, then peel apart and shake it (like a Polaroid Picture) to help dry the chemistry. And to haveRead More →