Developing your film at home is both rewarding and frustrating at the same time and to add on an extra layer of complexity there is a lot of developers out there that you can use, especially in the black & white field. While certainly not as much as there used to be, there is still an excellent selection of developers to suit almost every person’s need, without having to dive deep into building your developers from base chemicals. Ultimately every photographer has a different taste but if you’re starting out with home development the choices may seem a little overwhelming so I’ll be breaking downRead More →

There are new developers, there are old developers, and then there is Rodinal. First released in 1891 by Agfa, Rodinal is the brainchild of the Doctor, not that Doctor, but Dr Momme Anderesen who disliked the reliance on hydroquinone in the traditional film developers of the day. Instead, he began work on using Aromatic Amines in 1880 before settling on p-aminophenol. The result is the developer we call today Rodinal. And for much of its life was a closely guarded secret by Agfa, at least until the patent expired. And while today Agfa exists, Rodinal has taken on many different forms, but the same formula.Read More →

I can trace my love and hate of medium format 6×6 SLRs from my time working with the Bronica SQ system. I had a pair of them at one time, the first being the SQ-Am, which was a bear to work with and chewed through batteries like no one’s business and then the battery died. Since I had a bunch of lenses already, I grabbed the much nicer SQ-Ai, but it lacked a waist-level finder and an action grip, making the camera troublesome to use. Plus, it had a tendency to spew the batteries out. Eventually, I gave the camera away to a fellow photographer,Read More →

The name Bergger has been until recently been relatively unknown here in North America (at least to me) until recently when I learned that they were planning on introducing a new film stock, Pancro 400. While, Pancro 400 is the only offering from the company, and while you might still find their older BRF400+ film stock, Pancro 400 is a beautiful classic film emulsion. When I heard about the film through the Film Photography Project when they were just releasing the stock, I made a point to pick it up. I found a surprisingly beautiful film, despite the increased amount of grain. I would wagerRead More →

One of my favourite cities in Ontario to photograph is Ottawa, Ontario, also the Capital City of Canada. While not as grandiose in planning as Washington DC, this city has plenty of offer the photographer. A recent week’s holiday there with my wife gave me a chance to exersize several cameras from my toolkit and having plenty of my pro gear having shot a weekend before hand I was loaded for bear both in gear and film stock. Nikon F5 – AF Nikkor 35mm 1:2D – Eastman 5363 @ ASA-25 Kodak HC-110 Dil. F 5:00 @ 20C Nikon F5 – AF DC-Nikkor 105mm 1:2D –Read More →