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 →

Oddly enough this is not the first Praktica SLR that I’ve had in my collection, one of my earliest SLRs that I never actually got around to using was a Praktica Super TL that ended up going into one of the early giveaways for the Film Photography Podcast in their first season along with a LOMO Lubitel 2. So when the LTL showed up at my doorstep, I decided to give the cameras another go. The LTL is, given its age, a bit of an anachronism. By the 1970s, most camera makers west of the iron curtain and Japan used open aperture TTL metering. Yet,Read More →

I never heard of the Duex before as I scrolled past the cameras being offered up for free on the Toronto Film Shooters Facebook Group, and this camera certainly caught my eye. One of the first things to catch me attention is the design of the camera, it screams art deco and saw the production during the height of the style’s popularity. The camera itself is asking to be used amongst the amazing architecture of The Loop in Chicago, Illinois or Manhatten in New York City. But since we’re in the time of plague still, it’ll have to be more local. The Duex is oneRead More →

If you’re of a certain age, your entire childhood was captured by a class of cameras that first showed up on the market in the late 1970s, the compact point-and-shoot. While the idea of automatic compact 35mm camera is nothing new, and the idea of the family snapshot as old as Eastman Kodak. But in the 1970s something new showed up on the market, autofocus. No longer did the photographer have to fiddle to get things in focus, autoexposure allowed for no thought to metering. The point, then press the shutter. Harkening back to the original Kodak, you press the button, we do the rest.Read More →

When it comes to Polaroid cameras, I have a love-hate relationship with them. I often find I don’t gel well with these instant wonders, and the cost of the film remains fairly steep. And these days almost all of the old-school Polaroid cameras are starting to get long in the tooth. Sure the Polaroid One is a great option and made in this century, but there are far more of the older cameras around than, the newer ones. This is where the Spirit enters, it is one of the first of the new Type-600 Polaroid cameras released in the early 1980s and is a bitRead More →

I’ll have to admit, ever since I went to Europe in 2015, I’ve wanted to add some sort of folding medium format camera to my collection. Something compact, shooting at least 6×4.5 or 6×6. And for a little while earlier this year, I had my eye on a Mamiya Six (the original one, not the modern rangefinder). After reading and searching, I realised that there were too many questions about the Mamiya Six and stopped looking. And then this beauty fell into my lap, and I’m glad it did. The Ikonta 521 might not be the best folding camera out there, but it is exactlyRead More →

When it comes to TLRs, there are plenty of choices out there and in many cases will cost you a fair amount of money. I’m talking Yashica, Minolta, Mamiya, and Rolleiflex plus several other upper-crust cameras. But for me, these were a second step (Yashica-12) and third step (Rolleiflex 2.8F) in my journey of Twin-Lens cameras. My first TLR is a true Soviet-era classic and a gateway drug into the wonders of both 120 film but also TLRs in general, and that is the Lubitel 2. Built by ЛOMO (LOMO) or Ленинградское Oптико-Mеханическое Oбъединение translated Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association one of the pillars of theRead More →

If you’re a long time listener to the Film Photography Project, you might recognise the name of the camera I’m reviewing today, but that is not the camera I’m referencing. There’s a certain soundbite used in some earlier episodes the Agfa Clack as said by one Dan Domme. The Click-II is the younger cousin to the Clack, unlike the Clack, the Click and Click-II shoots 6×6 and is a bit of a strange duck given that the Click-II saw production starting in 1959 long after the days of the simple box camera. Yet, even today cameras like the Click-II see a level of popularity amongRead More →

One of the biggest mistakes I made was giving away my Nikon FM2n as a gift, thinking that I would be OK with the Nikon FA. And while these days to replace an FM2n is a costly endeavour, they have shot up in price since I bought mine. I have since come to terms that the only way to get an FM2n again is to have one returned as a gift. But what about an earlier model, the camera that you could say started it all? Released as a result of the OM-System, the Nikon FM ushered in a new age of Nikon built aroundRead More →

Back in my first struggling steps into the broader world of film photography, I came across this strange camera. Now, I knew about Hasselblads and also knew how expensive they were, but the seller informed me proudly that the Kiev 88 is a direct copy of the Hasselblad but at a far better price. I ended up getting the body, two lenses (but never used the second one??) and a pair of film backs. Oh, the seller also threw in a Zorki 4 with a pinholed shutter. I had to admit; I liked working with the 88, I lucked out and got the CM versionRead More →