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The 1990s and 2000s were a weird time for film photography and film cameras. Digital was starting to arrive as a medium, and often the first digital cameras were adapted from film cameras. But there was also a push to chase nostalgia, and several companies put out what can only be described as premium options. Sure, you have the standard names like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Minolta. However, the biggest player in this push for premium is Kyocera. Kyocera had come in, purchased a couple of historic brands, Yashica and Contax, and began producing cameras and slapping these names on them. Kyocera produced cameras fromRead More →

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It’s been a bit of time since I had the chance to do a solo photo walk through Toronto. I had a week off from work and decided to make the most of it. I had to come into the city to do a run at Downtown Camera to get film and chemistry for later in the summer, and decided to make the most of it by doing a bit of a walk through some of my favourite parts of the old town. But it wasn’t my usual route, so I decided to do something a little different in getting around. Despite the heat thisRead More →

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Secrets run naturally among the urban exploration community. In Hamilton, Ontario, secret locations were common, and hiding the actual name of the location was common practice. But the Chicago community took things to a whole new level with good reason. By the time I started to explore the area briefly, there was already a great deal of tension between different groups. In the long run, I got into a better group. It netted me a chance to visit one of the prime locations in the local catalogue, and even now, more than ten years later, I still feel weird exposing the name and history ofRead More →

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Here I am back in the half-frame saddle. I have a couple of people to thank for this. First, there is a student at the college where I work who has a Pentax 17. It was the first time I had seen one of those cameras in the wild, and I was more than happy to let me hold it and fiddle with it. It felt good, far heavier and well-built than I was expecting. Then there was an article by fellow blogger and all-around awesome guy, Johnny Martyr, about his experience with the Canon Demi EE28. Now, in all fairness, I had been lookingRead More →

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When I started working on this series, I knew I needed to include a TLR on the list. But the biggest question is which TLR to include, as I’ve had three in my toolkit, all of which have had some impact on my photography. But after some thought, I settled on the Rolleiflex. The reason is that it’s been the longest-serving medium-format camera in my toolkit, and one I’ve been using before it was cool in this film photography resurgence. Does that make me a hipster? Yes, it probably does. At least I don’t wear a beanie. The Rolleiflex is not my first TLR; itRead More →

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A few weeks ago, an event that I first attended in 2012 had its final form. Back on the 20th and 21st of June, a group gathered to celebrate the life of Bill Schwab, who had passed away in 2025 while doing what he did best: leading a group of keen photographers to explore the world. Bill was the brains behind an event called Photostock. It started as a small gathering in the woods on his property in Michigan, far from the dirty industrial south, but in the far more beautiful northern parts of the state. And while I’m a fan of an event becomingRead More →

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The main reason behind this epic road trip was to fill in a bunch of gaps in my War of 1812 project. I was on the tail end of the project and wanted to fill in a bunch of gaps before I got married in 2017. And there were two areas that I had not yet explored and wanted to because they offered up parts of the conflict that are often forgotten or not even presented here in Ontario. While the majority of the war took place here in Ontario, there were also a series of battles along the East Coast. So I plotted theRead More →

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I’ve been looking to review a Hanimex camera since I discovered that it was a Hanimex camera that captured my early childhood memories. I really wanted to find the same model camera, the Hanimex 35SE, but sadly, the only ones I could find were for parts only or untested. Throughout last year, I kept my ears to the ground and ended up at Kosmo Foto’s shop, where I saw a massive amount of Hanimex cameras available. After confirming that he could ship to Canada, I began to look more closely. While a 35SE was available, it sold before I could pull the trigger. So IRead More →

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I had not been exploring in Buffalo proper since 2007, and honestly, if they had including some of these locations at that event I probably would have had a better time. So taking advantage of the invitation to join in a short Labour Day exploration in 2012 to check out a couple of locations on the other side of the border, I jumped on the chance. Both locations we checked out were right next to each other in a former industrial corridor on Northland Avenue. Of the two, the most interesting is this spot, the former Curtiss-Wright metal forming works, but its history is muchRead More →

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I love winter. Well, a specific type of winter, the winter we had this past winter. And while we’re all here now, looking forward to spring, I wanted to look back at the winter that was, because I had a lot of fun this year. So what made this winter better than, say, the past two that we had? Well, first off, we got snow early, back in November 2025, which was awesome. And sure, we did lose all of it over the rest of the month and into December. But we did get some back in December, only to lose it again. But weRead More →