Svema, or by its proper name, Свема, is a film stock that is relatively unknown here in North America. But if you’re a fan of the Film Photography Podcast you will have heard of Svema. It would be Svema Foto 200 that first burst onto the FPP scene, and quickly became a favourite film of Leslie Lazenby. The name comes from the combination of two Russian words, Светочувствительные Материалы, translated means Photosensitive Materials. While Svema collapsed when the Soviet Union died in the 1990s, another Eastern European film manufacture, Astrum, continues the legacy of Svema using some of the old machinery in a new factoryRead More →

If you’ve seen this camera before in my reviews, you’d be partly correct; the Leica R3 is the cousin of the XE-7; both are internally the same camera with some external differences (also the obvious being the lens mount). The XE marked a new era for Minolta as it introduced the idea of a semi-automatic camera and a confident professional air to their cameras, not to mention a unique style of names, the X rather than sticking with the old SR nomenclature. While many companies went with smaller form factors in the 1970s, Minolta stuck with their bulky designs, at least for a while. ButRead More →

Nikon has an uncanny ability to build amazing cameras, not always but sometimes they get one just right, but then it just slides through the cracks. The Nikon F90 (N90 for you American readers) is one such camera, one from a proud line of SLRs that stretch back to the 1960s with the original Nikkormat. While often overlooked against such professional bodies like the Nikon F4 and Nikon F5 which the production of the F90 overlaps. The F90 can be had for a song these days and yet performs well both on its own and when paired with one of those bodies. And while IRead More →