Looking Forward, Looking Back | The Best of the Old and What’s New

Well, here we are at the end of another year, and you know in the rearview, 2024 was a good year. I felt that I was putting out posts and content at a more sustainable rate. I also felt that I was not always pressed for time each month in producing reviews. I got to check out some new film stocks, add some new favourite cameras, and explore some familiar and new places.

The Best of 2024
This year, I consciously chose to reduce the number of reviews I did over the year. It was starting to get challenging to keep everything moving and output the best possible reviews I could, especially since I have started shooting multiple rolls of film for the camera reviews and doing YouTube reviews for each camera along with some film and developer reviews on that platform. Even with that, I produced four camera reviews, five film reviews, three lens reviews, and three developer reviews. And I enjoyed the slightly slower pace because I could give myself license to add and move reviews around. Some months only had one review, and others had two. I even was able to slot in a classic film review this year!

Two cameras stood out to me this year and have become fast favourites, the Minolta Dynax 600si Classic and Canon EOS Elan 7. Despite having several ‘pro’ SLRs on my shelf, these two cameras made an impact with their form factor, control, and user experience. I found myself shooting these more than my F5 and Maxxum 9. It’s because of how the controls are with more physical controls than buttons and menus. I still love the F5 and Maxxum 9; they are smaller and more portable and can come with me on most trips when space is an issue. They can still deliver the results I am looking for. In the film category, the stand-out films this year were FPP XRay and FPP Infrared; these two films gave me something different in my photography and performed above my expectations. Especially when I paired the IR film with a 092 deep red filter. I only wish I could have used it with a proper R72. I’ve seen the results, and they are spectacular. The X-ray film offered a unique colour rendering, especially in greens, and changed my opinion of X-ray films in general.

There were also a few surprises this year. The Ektar H35N certainly surprised me in the camera category, as it was far more fun and easy to shoot than I expected. Regarding formats, the one that I avoided, like the plague, was half-frame, mainly because of the volume of shots you get on a roll. But after sound advice from a good friend and using 24-exposure rolls instead of 36-exposure rolls, I found myself ripping through them without difficulty. The other camera I had a lot more fun with than I expected is the Sony CyberShot WX7; this little ‘digicam’ certainly made an impact. While some may not consider it an actual ‘digicam’ due to the CMOS sensor, it fits the bill in my book. This year also marked the first time I reviewed some new film stocks, and the one that surprised me the most was Harman Phoenix. While it is not a top performer, it performed better than I expected. I saw The early shots as bad, but I made a point to wait and expose the rolls under brighter light and got far better results. While I was still not 100% happy with my results, over-exposure (say 160 or 125) will do much better, and summer light rather than spring will help the film do better. The folks at Harman have a proof-of-concept, and I can’t wait to see what they can produce next.

I did have a couple of disappointments, but thankfully, the winners were more than the disappointments. Oddly enough, the disappointments were both in film stocks. But in both cases, the blame lies lies on me rather than the films themselves. The first of this batch, ORWO NC500, I don’t know. Part of my problem was with the conditions; the dull grey winter we had (again) seemed to make me feel uncreative, and I think that carried through the results I saw. The results were good, as the film worked well for the blue-heavy winter light, but it looked better in the spring. The second is Foma Ortho 400, which is not a bad film. I did get some excellent results from the stock. But overall, I was disappointed with a majority of the rolls. Probably because of the green filter I kept putting in front of the lens.

I’m already laying out the plans for next year and have many great things lined up! In fact, I already have a couple of reviews for next year complete and ready to go for 2025. And it will be a good year with plenty of exciting developers that have come back into production, another D-76 clone, Bellini Foto Hydrofen and another rebirth classic, FX-37, now produced by Flic Film here in Canada. For film reviews this year, I have a mostly B&W lineup with a couple of ORWO stocks, P400 and UN54+, along with Ferrania’s P33 (providing I can find four rolls) and the final one, Flic Film’s Aurora 800, which took the Internet by storm this year. I have yet to settle on all the camera reviews for next year, but I have one confirmed, the Miranda Sensorex; plus, I have a couple of other ideas. As for lenses, I have a mostly Minolta lineup with the 24-105, 28-80 and 20mm lenses all up, along with the massive Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 and the sweet Canon 28-105 to round it out.

State of the Blog
Running a blog these days is not always easy. Readership is down across the entire format as more people are looking at short form content. Either consumed through video methods or posts on social media. In 2023 I published 171 articles, this year that number is 106 articles, which is a significant drop but not my much. Being the first run through on a monthly model with two posts per week, readership and numbers have stayed close to what I had last year. Also this year marked the first full year of running my website on a cloud server, AWS, and I’m happy with the service. While I don’t always share my metrics, here are the breakdown of the numbers for 2024 as of publishing, which is technically only less one post for the year. Now these metrics are based on what my standings were on 20 December. My total number of views for 2024 is 282.8K views which is only 12% less than last year’s number. I was expecting to see a drop, but I did not expect to get so close to matching last year’s numbers. The top five performing posts this year are all older posts and they also surprised me, at number one is my review of the Nikkor 24/2.8 followed by the Nikkor 28-105mm lens. In third is the review of Eastman Vision3 250D and then the Adox FX-39 II developer review. And in fifth place is the review of the Pentax Epsio 115M. The top three were all published in 2023 where they had about 1,700 views apiece. The views on the Vision3 review more than doubled, having less than 1,000 last year to just over 2,000 this year. My review of FX-39 II was published back in 2021 and saw both 2021 and 2022 with less than 100 views, only to explode with over 2,000 views for both 2023-4. And my Espio review is also from 2023 and saw 1,800 views each year. Hopefully this sets a benchmark with the new schedule and I’ll see what next year brings! The one thing that I have come to realise by actually studying these stats and like YouTube videos, you can’t always judge the post by the first twenty-four hours. Sometimes these things are slow burns. The first full year of tracking stats (2021) I had 266.2K views, the next two years were over 300k with 2022 being my best year to date. So if you’re thinking that your post isn’t doing well, take a look at it in a couple of years to see how well it has done and you never know, it may exploded one day.

Classic Camera Revival – Ten Years Strong
It was in 2015 that the first episode of Classic Camera Revival aired, and I never thought we would make it this far. Yes, CCR has been fueling GAS for a decade, and there is no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Hopefully, in 2025, we’ll have a few more in-studio recording sessions, a return to an episode about darkroom printing and another exciting twist on the Mystery Camera Challenge. Also, I plan to host a CCR 10th Anniversary Photo walk in the summer that will involve visiting some of Toronto’s excellent craft breweries.

What’s Staying, What’s Going, and What’s Coming
This year has been one of experimentation. The first bit was shifting to a twice-a-week posting schedule. While I did switch back to the classic schedule for one week at the start of May, I’m rather happy with the new schedule, which will continue into next year. I also tried a couple of new regular posts each month. The first is a series on my past Urban Exploration adventures, which has proved a fun series and will continue through next year. The best part about the series is that generating the content can be done well ahead of schedule. I’m happy to say that all the entries for 2025 have been completed, and I’m already working on 2026! Another new entry this year was my Recommended Reading posts; while I did enjoy putting these together to highlight fellow bloggers and YouTube creators, these were often the ones that I struggled to create. The reason is that I start off strong at the beginning of the month, then fall off in the middle. By the deadline, I had to scramble to find the items to put into the post. If you’re catching the drift, the Recommended Reading feature will stop at the end of this year. That gives me more wiggle room to put up a couple more open entries into the posting schedule. I will also not be a part of the Frugal Film Project next year. I’m just not feeling it, so I’ll give it a rest for 2025. Instead, I’ll return to a previous project but redo it from scratch, as 2025 is the 210th Anniversary of the end of the Anglo-American War of 1812. I’ll be doing a project that explores the war end-to-end. More importantly, it will be explored chronologically, tying the entire story together. And the best part is that I have been working hard and managed to get the entirity of 1812 and the second volume of revisiting my urban exploration adventures are ready to go for 2025. Other than that, the rest of the blog will continue to hum along with reviews, photography, Classic Camera Revival, and YouTube, which will continue on the new schedule.