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Today Bill, James, and Alex sit down with Gary Clennan from Alberta. Gary is a long time photographer, a good dude who also is a self-taught camera technician under the name LensMedic YYC. Gary has worked on a few of our cameras and provides a valuable service to Canada as the number of techs who are willing to work with film cameras is fluctuating. Gary talks about gear, repair, teaching, training, travel, and beer! You can find Gary on Social Media… Instagram: instagram.com/calgary_street Instagram: instagram.com/lensmedicyyc Want a subscription to SilverGrain Classics and are a fan of Classic Camera Revival? Visit their shop online and buyRead More →

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When it comes to Living History museums, I have a long enjoyment of these sites. From jumping in Pioneer Puddles at Upper Canada Village to putting on musketry displays before Waterloo’s 200th. One of my favourites is Westfield outside of Hamilton, Ontario. While smaller and quieter, it has some of the oldest buildings from this part of the province! And while the museum aspect is officially closed for the time being, I learned that the site itself remains accessible and without reservations! So I took an early morning visit to avoid any major crowds and got some beautiful morning light. While every building on theRead More →

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If there is one lens that completely changed my outlook on photography, this is that lens. I know I usually don’t say that gear can make you a better photographer, and I’m not saying that this lens made me a better photographer. But it did help me realise and execute my vision. I use these two photos as an example of that, in the first photo, shot in 2005 on a K-M Z2 digital camera at the widest angle I knew exactly what I wanted to capture. That grand scale of the Hearn generating station, but I couldn’t with the gear I had. So whenRead More →

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What makes this week a bit more interesting is that almost this time last year, Heather and I were on vacation and driving along the Niagara Parkway, a favourite drive for us that is perfectly safe to do even during a global pandemic (but unlike last year, the end is now very much insight). Like last year, I was shooting my Nikon FM loaded with Fomapan 100. But I learned from last year and brought a slightly longer lens and picked a different developer! Long before the arrival of the Europeans, the earliest human settlers in the Niagara Region, those of the Neutral Nation thatRead More →

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If there is one film that has achieved a little bit of a cult following these days it’s Adox Silvermax. Silvermax was the first true film to come out of the renewed Adox Fotowerks GmbH factory in Bad Sarrow, Germany and its parent company Fotoimpex. Based on a classic Agfa film, which some people think is rebadged Agfa Scala 200 (a legendary B&W reversal film), it has a higher than normal silver content and when paired with Adox Silvermax Developer presents a classic B&W look. If you were a fan of the older Adox and Efke films, then Silvermax will be your jam (I Hope).Read More →

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The whole gang is back together around the round table (virtually)! Back earlier in the year John was clearing out some of his boxes of strange M42 lenses and came across four ‘fourth party’ lenses and decided that they would make excellent fodder for a future CCR episode and handed them out through random draw to everyone. And today the episode finally hits the air! But we’re not only talking about bad (but not all so bad) lenses, we’re also digging into our photography book library to talk about some of our favourite books on our shelves. From the Junk Drawer The cusp of theRead More →

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Despite the title of this week’s entry in the project, nothing actually has died, but I’ll bet it drew you into the post! This week we’re back in Halton Hills at another historical site. You will remember back earlier in the project; we visited Georgetown, Ontario, a part of Halton Hills, today. This week we’re a bit north of the historic community in another one of those settlements that sprung up, Silvercreek and specifically the historic Scotsdale Farm. I first learned about this place from two good friends, Bill Smith and Andrew Chapman and had a chance to visit under less than ideal conditions atRead More →

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Am I crazy for reviewing a camera that you can have for a song? Maybe? But I’m out here to talk about a camera that many will pass over due to age and the slow autofocus speeds. But when it comes to cameras in the history of photography, the F-401 fits in a strange little niche often forgotten next to the more advanced cameras of the day and, of course, the almighty F90/N90(x/s). And while I have given away the F90, and it gets far more use with its new owner, when I saw the F-401 offered up for free, I jumped on the camera.Read More →

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Much of my early years of photography were taken up with the Minolta system. From my initial gateway camera, the Hi-Matic 7s to my first SLR the SR-T 102. The next step in my journey would be some level of automation, and for that, in stepped the X-7a. A gift from a church member who was no longer using the camera gifted me the camera and a single lens. But having a set of Minolta SR lenses already, I had an excellent selection of optics. And the camera would be my first experience with a motor drive, go through some of my earliest explorations andRead More →

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I can always remember seeing this massive building off in the distance going to and from Guelph when visiting my Opa. When I first got to see the building up close, it wasn’t as big as I thought it was. In fact, it was rather small. I’m talking about the former Guelph Jail. I’ve known it has been abandoned and closed for some time, and back in the day, I always contemplated trying to sneak in under cover of darkness. But things never aligned properly, I did get a chance to see inside during the one Guelph Doors Open event I attended in 2009. TheRead More →