Last year, I participated in a ‘hidden project. Usually, when I do a photography project, I have regular blog posts and a Flickr album all related to it. But not this one; this was another group project called 12 Months On Film; it ran on Instagram and was moderated by the Film Shooters Collective. The purpose was to get cameras off shelves, film out of fridges and enjoy photography. The guidelines were simple, shoot a different camera each month, you could use different film stocks, developers or all the same, but the camera had to be different each month. A rather nice change from theRead More →

Well it’s the end of the old year and the start of a new one. Which means it’s time to look back at last year’s favourite shots from the Frugal Film Project and look ahead at what I’m doing this year for the project. It’s hard to believe that I’m going into my third year of the project, but I feel I’m hitting the groove and not feeling that I need to do more each month. I’m also glad that I can still continue to run the project and I have some interesting ideas for this year and a camera that breaks the theme fromRead More →

We’re back in Burlington, Ontario! After a rather long March and a rather busy April, it was a matter of getting out when we could, and that was the first weekend of the month. Not wanting to go far, the family packed up and drove the forty-five minutes to the lovely city of Burlington to enjoy an early morning walk through the former village of Wellington Centre, one of the two core urban centres that formed the modern city today. What we call Lake Ontario today, Hamilton Harbour, and the once dense forests and fertile soil of the Niagara Escarpment have attracted human civilisation andRead More →

When it comes to photography, last year I found that I was out shooting film for the purpose of a review or a YouTube video or something else. So with Christmas in the rearview and a rather tough week back to work it was time to get out and have a family adventure just for the sake of getting out of town for several hours and going for a drive. There are lots of amazing towns through Southern Ontario, many are touristy, but there are some true hidden gems. One of those gems is St. Mary’s, Ontario. I first learned about St. Mary’s through myRead More →

Well, here we are at the start of a new year and looking back at last year’s outstanding Frugal Film Project! I had a lot more fun with this project, and it helped nurture my soft spot for consumer 1990s/2000s SLRs. It’s funny; I never saw these as viable cameras before, yet they have a beautiful charm. You don’t have to worry too much because they can be a dime a dozen. Plus, they work with many lenses that most people use with their other autofocus systems. Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Minolta (Sony) all have lenses that work on both digital (full-frame) and 35mm bodies.Read More →

There are many cities and towns in Ontario that I feel connected to, primarily through my photography. They have been common in my photography projects, reviews, and videos. One of these cities is Hamilton, Ontario. I spent many years learning the art of photography and exposure by tromping through the many abandoned buildings the city offered to explorers through the early 21st century when I was active in the hobby. While most of my time was spent in either the downtown or industrial sectors, I had only a passing interest in a part of Hamilton, Concession Street, up at the edge of Hamilton Mountain—the ratherRead More →

This is only the second time I’ve reached a significant milestone in my ongoing reviews, the magic number of one hundred. And to be clear, I’ve done one hundred film reviews, not reviewed one hundred separate film stocks. And that’s because I’ve reviewed some rebadged films; sometimes, I knew it was a rebadge and then made a point not to go after that film stock again, notability ORWO films. I reviewed the four motion picture-specific films from ORWO as their Lomography rebadge. But in the case of Fomapan 100, I reviewed that first as KosmoFoto Mono 100 and then again as Fomapan 100. Agfa AviFotoRead More →

It’s hard to believe it’s been five years today since I married my best friend. I don’t often put a lot of my personal life here on my blog, but today is a special day so it deserves something special. And since photography has always intertwined in my relationship with my wife it only makes sense to put it here on our fifth wedding anniversary. I guess it all started on a rainy day in Arras. So today I present a set of photos from the past five years of our marriage and the adventures we have had together! And while we haven’t been ableRead More →

I have known about Adox HR-50 for some time but have purposefully avoided including it in past years. Originally released in 2018, HR-50 was one of the new film emulsions to come out of Adox shortly after releasing CHS 100 II (reviewed last month). The reason being that HR-50 is a semi-closed imaging system and I never had good luck with those, as seen by my Adox CMS20 II review. I caught a lot of flack for that one. There is also the trouble with getting the stuff here in Canada. But when I saw that both the film and the dedicated developer, Adox HR-DEVRead More →

When a developer and a film stock are so intertwined or one was made for the other it makes you think of a closed image system. I have plenty of experience working with those, not surprisingly also from Adox, but also Kodak Techincal Pan comes to mind. While the film and the developer are specifically designed for each other, both can be used in other developers and on other films. However, don’t think of Adox HR-DEV as a one or two-trick pony as despite the name it is a wonderful developer that does more than just develop Adox HR-50. While the bottle only lists twoRead More →