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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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James Lee sits down with former East Coaster, turned West Coast Portrait Photographer, Justen Rosenberg! Justin is primarily a portrait photographer, who also shoots corporate and commercial work with a bit of landscape thrown in for good measure. Ten Year’s Sober, but he doesn’t see that as a crutch but rather helps show duality within his photography, that he can be both happy and sad at the same times. But it is not only in his photography that it helps; it helps him as a human also. It isn’t embarrassing, and he is open with this to help his own healing and help others whoRead More →

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Let me start this by saying that DD-X and I have not had the best of relationships. The first time I used it I wasn’t happy with my results and decided that I was never going to touch the stuff again. But hey, almost every filmstock and developer are worth a second glance. DD-X, like its Kodak cousin, TMax developer was initially designed for use with the Delta range of films, specifically Delta 3200. Ilford has two versions of this developer, Ilfotec DD which is designed mainly for automated film processors that will use a dedicated replenisher and used in the stock formulation. White DD-XRead More →

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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 →

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If you’re deep into the Minolta/Sony A-Mount system, you probably know this lens better as the Secret Handshake; in fact, that’s how my friend (fellow photographer and brother-in-arms) James introduced the lens to me. The nickname, given erroneously, is one of the first instances I’ve heard of an Internet rumour going ‘viral’ when it was shared that Minolta sold these lenses at cost when it was initially introduced with the first Maxxum cameras in the mid-1980s. This rumour is not true; at an initial price of 350$ USD (that’s 1,073.55$ CAD in 2021), honestly, that doesn’t sound like at cost to me. But ultimately, itRead More →

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No matter how you describe him, Merlin is a film photographer that gets around, he is in touch with all different aspects of the community as a whole, kind of like Kevin Bacon and today he’s joining Bill, James, and Chrissie on today’s episode! While he doesn’t describe himself as a photographer, he feels more like an archivist, he loves using film to archive the people and places that are important to him. While traditional film is a medium he uses, his film of choice is instant and it is the community that he feels the most connected to, especially the Instant Film Society. MerlinRead More →

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The original slow film offering from Lomography and one with a great name, Fantome! I had initially thought that I wouldn’t jump on these right off the bat. However, after seeing some early results, I decided to give this slow offering a try. And don’t let the slow speed concern you; you can quickly shoot this film handheld on bright sunny days, although unlike last months film, I did shoot a roll on a tripod to see how well it handled long exposure. Fantome 8, like Babylon 13, is a repurposed ORWO film. ORWO DP31 is a positive archival duplication film designed to produce duplicatesRead More →

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I had hoped that we could have at least met in person by this point in the year, at least in a small distant gathering. But by the middle of April, such a dream had been dashed. But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t run a third virtual event. Having skipped March because it got far too busy actually to plan something out. At the end of April, the date had been set, the virtual pub setup, and time to go. I had already decided to stick close to home for the month. With the weather improving, I booked an early morning hike at MountRead More →

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Suppose a singular camera relaunched the love of film photography and sparked the inspiration of hundreds if not thousands of photographers. That camera is the LOMO LC-A. While this particular camera is not an LC-A, it is, in the proper fashion of the original LC-A, a direct successor and continuation on the inspiration given by that fateful day in 1991, but more on that later. The LC-A+ is Lomography’s answer to providing the classic look that gave the latter days of the Soviet Bloc rich saturated colours and heavy contrast. First released in 2006 after the closure of the original LOMO production lines for theRead More →