One of the great things about photography as a hobby is that you can take whatever level you want and be happy where your photography is, even if it is just snapping away with your phone. But you may eventually want to take your craft up to that next level, and while new gear can certainly help make that next step, photography is one of those things that you don’t always need that next best thing. All cameras are the same idea, a dark box that allows you to capture images, freeze time, if you will, onto some form of medium. Getting a film cameraRead More →

The year was 2012; I had been shooting film in a far more serious way for three years at that point. I learned of a speciality film store called Freestyle Photographic from an episode of the Film Photography Project. They had all sorts of weird films from Europe that I had never heard of nor seen at my local camera store (which at that time was either Henry’s or Burlington Camera). With companies like Efke and Adox, strange, exotic for my North American sensibilities. I purchased a pile of Efke and Adox CHS Art films, both in 35mm and 120, 50 and 100-speed offerings. WhileRead More →

I remember it clearly, having walked into Henry’s store to get film for an upcoming PYPS weekend, Winter Weekend 2006 in Oshawa, Ontario. I don’t remember exactly why I pulled the roll of Sensia 400 off the rack; my jam in those days was colour negative films. But that was also the weekend that I had a digital camera for the first time, so maybe I started to branch out in my shooting. Sensia was the right speed I usually shot (400), and the name was close to Superia (at a glance), and my journey into slide film had begun. Eventually, I branched out andRead More →

Honestly, you can thank Facebook for reminding me of this amazing trip that I took nearly eight years ago when I am first starting to see posts reminding me that this started to occur. It was 2012, several months after my first major Urban Exploration Meetup, since a rather off-putting event in Buffalo, New York. MAMU or the Mid-Atlantic Meetup had been resurrected by DJCraig, who I had met in December 2011 outside an abandoned hotel north of Dayton, Ohio, at a separate UE event VCXPEX. Early in April, I found myself on a twelve-hour drive south, the first time I had ever done suchRead More →

When it comes to fine-grain developing, the developer that most people reach for today is Kodak Xtol. But Xtol is one of the newest developers to come out of Kodak, before Xtol if you wanted to tame that grain, you reached for Microdol-X. While I’m unsure as to when Microdol-X was first released by Kodak, I’ve found images online of the powder coming in cans rather than pouches. The logo style is that of 1935, so I’m guessing it was released at some point in the mid-1930s at the earliest. I stumbled across Microdol-X while visiting Pittsburg back in 2015, while my main goal wasRead More →

Several years ago, when I was starting to branch out in my home film developing, I would try a lot of different, strange, and odd-ball developers. Sure I went with the basics, D-76, HC-110, Rodinal. But as I continued to listen to the Film Photography Podcast, I started to get my hands on stranger items, PMK Pyro being the first speciality developer and from there Pyrocat-HD which has become a fast favourite. But then I heard Matt talk about a developer call FA-1027. The next trip I made to New York City, I popped into B&H and got myself a bottle. Sadly I have onlyRead More →

These days I will rarely work with Ilfosol 3, but it remains a developer that I always keep in the back of my mind. After learning how to develop my own black & white film from my good friend Julie using Kodak D-76, it would be a few more years before I started taking on the process full time. When I went into Burlington Camera to get all the equipment I needed to take on the daunting task some eight years ago, Joan pointed me towards Ilfosol 3 as a good starting point when you didn’t want to keep a large quantity of developer mixedRead More →

When it comes past projects related to history which I have written, the foundations of the events which I planned to explore are relatively modern happening some three to two hundred years in the past. A small drop in the bucket of the history of our planet. But when it comes to the Welland Canal, the foundations of that canal take place in the dark distances of prehistory. The need for a canal across the Niagara Peninsula is related to a massive limestone cliff that cuts across the modern province of Ontario known today as the Niagara Escarpment. Today the cliff runs from the NiagaraRead More →

There is a tonne of iconic film stocks that have been released and are no longer with us; I’m thinking Kodak Plus-X, Kodak Panatomic-X, almost the entire line of Polaroid Film. And among those Polaroid films, the one that probably hurt the hardest when it saw cancellation in 2008 is Type 55. Type 55 is a unique film even among Polaroid instant films in that it produces a usable print (obviously) but also a usable negative. And it is a legend that the negative used in Type 55 is based on Kodak Panatomic-X. It is also among those films that I wish I got toRead More →

I’ll be the first to admit; I never was a fan of TMax Developer. It was, at least in my mind initially TMax developer was a one-trick pony. Suitable for only modern T-Grain films (TMax, Delta, Acros). But that quickly changed as I started to branch out and trying to see what the developer can do with both modern film grain and classic grain. I discovered that TMax developer is something a little more than a one-trick pony. Technical Details Manufacture: Kodak Name: TMax Developer Primary Developer: Hydroquinone Type: Reusable or One-Shot Mix From: Liquid Handling TMax developer is a liquid, it runs clear andRead More →