Back in the early days when I was just starting to explore the wonderful world of films outside of Fuji, Kodak, and Ilford I hopped on the Freestyle website and discovered two brands of film I had never heard of before and landed myself a variety of Efke and Adox films. Today I’m going with one of my favourite of these ‘classic’ emulsions, and that is Adox CHS 100. Like Efke, CHS films are silver rich, grainy and lands you a mid-century classic look. Sadly, the original CHS 100 ended when Fotoimipex closed down shop in 2012. Adox, however, bounced back and still produce onRead More →

Through 2016 I did a 52-Roll project where I shot the Rollei RPX films for each week, out of the three flavours available my personal favourite remained RPX 25, a spiritual successor to the iconic Agfa APX 25. These days in film photography there aren’t many offerings below ASA-100, Pan F+ is a solid choice, but sometimes you want something sharp, fine-grained, and slow. And for that, you have Rollei RPX 25. While the thin polyester base might make it hard to handle in the bag and widely thin in sheet formats, the results are worth the trouble. Film Specs Type: Panchromatic B&W Film Base:Read More →

New York City, a place filled with photographic possibilities. And a city I didn’t think I’d be getting back to anytime soon after my last visit back in 2013. Sure it took five years, but I managed to get back, on my honeymoon no less! And my awesome wife Heather even let me bring some toys along. And by toys I mean cameras. I went loaded for bear, the trusty Nikon FA three AI-S lenses (35, 50, and 105) and lots of photographic film. Now usually when I go shooting buildings in a city I tend to capture the full view of the building, gettingRead More →

I have and always will have a soft spot for compact fixed lens rangefinders since my first camera was one such camera. The Minolta Hi-Matic 7s. But the Ricoh 500 G is not a Hi-Matic, released at the end of the craze of that style of camera; it is an underdog for its time going up against the cult classic Canon QL17 GIII. And while the 500 G does not share the same spotlight at its Canon counterpart, the 500 G is a strong camera that fills the role of compact rangefinder that packs a punch but won’t break the bank. Special thanks to MikeRead More →

George Armistead, one of the great defenders of the United States of America, stalwart commander of Fort McHenry, an action that would lead him to an early grave. George was born in New Market, Virginia on 10 April 1780. He along with his five brothers would all serve their country in the armed service. But for George, his service began at the age of 19 as an Ensign in the 7th US Infantry. He proved himself an excellent officer and promoted to First Lieutenant by the turn of the century. However, with the end of the Quasi-War with France, the army was reduced in size,Read More →

Here we are, a long time coming but, this is the end, and it has been a long and fascinating journey to reach this point. It’s always a bittersweet feeling when such a long and involved project comes to an end. But all things must end, and so must my journey into the War of 1812. At least I can say that I’ve done more than just scratching the surface of the conflict that would go on to define the relations between Canada, England, and the United States still today. When I first started the project way back in March 2012, I had no ideaRead More →

If you have ever used the Olympus Trip 35 then, you’ll be right at home with the Minoltina-P. The camera is a fixed lens, semi-automatic point and shoot from the 1960s and honestly before I saw it on the shelf at Burlington Camera I had never even known this camera existed. But don’t let that scare you, Minolta produced a lot of underdog cameras through the 1960s that often were as good as their competitors. The Hi-Matic went up against the Olympus 35 and Cannonet Series, and the Minoltina, well it’s an Olympus Trip 35. Disclaimer: This is an old review, and is scheduled forRead More →

There is a reason that this camera is nicknamed the fridge it’s big, heavy, clunky, and near awkward to carry with you. But if you treat it right it will give you big beautiful images that will give you a cheaper alternative to 4×5 with near the same quality and more importantly the same aspect ratio in your negatives! Of course, for those unfamiliar with the system, there are two models of 6×7 Mamiya cameras the one being reviewed is the RB version. Special thanks to Alex Koroleski for loaning out this camera for this review! Disclaimer: This is an old review, while I amRead More →

When Pentax developed their K-Mount, they decided that this, like the M42 they had used before would become the standard for bayonet mount SLRs. And while the K-Mount remains to this day pretty much untouched it did not become the standard with Nikon and Canon developing their own lens mounts. However this didn’t stop other companies from latching onto the K-Mount band wagon and several clones soon popped up. One such camera was the XR7 by Ricoh (oddly enough it was Ricoh that ended up buying up Pentax). And what a camera the XR7 is, this is a small light weight semi-automatic SLR that canRead More →

When it comes to game-changing Nikon SLRs, the FA certainly is one of them, and one of a long line of game-changing cameras out of the company. For the FA the change came in the metering system. This was the first camera that featured full matrix metering out of AI and AI-S lenses and full program shooting. The camera accomplishes this by having a small built-in computer storage system that has a selection of scenes and compares the scene in front of the camera and picks the exposure based on one of the scenes in the memory. A smart trick, while not perfect, was theRead More →