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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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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 →

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When I originally planned out this week of the project, I had a completely different name for the entry, “The Second Wedge”, after Uxbridge’s position in the Second Wedge of the Oak Ridges Moraine and a local craft brewery. But after spotting an interesting statue downtown, which I initially thought was another war memorial, I decided to change the name. It was not another war memorial, not in the cenotaph sense that many communities across Ontario feature in their downtown; this was a memorial to Samuel Sharpe. A Lieutenant-Colonel in World War One, Distinguished Service Order recipient, Member of Parliament, and dead at 45 byRead 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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Two weeks in a row outside of Halton Region? Yes, the continuing lockdown has made me go stir-crazy, and you can honestly only find so much to photograph within your own little part of Ontario. Plus, I have to keep a few ideas in the back pocket as backups if something big prevents me from getting out. After doing plenty of these types of projects, you need some ideas as backups. But this week, we’re back into rural Ontario and the community of St. Jacobs, home to an amazing farmer’s market, a tourist railroad, Mennonites, and a cute little downtown. While I would have likedRead 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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It felt good to get up and out of my own little part of the province, and a solid drive (only an hour and a half) put me well outside the paved sections of the Greater Toronto Area to the small community of Palmerston. A community that owes its founding to the railroad, a rarity here in Ontario where most communities were founded along a river, canal, major road, or post-war colonization. While you can walk end-to-end in a short time, there is a lot more to Palmerston than the railroad alone; there is also some medical history to the community that helped defeat aRead 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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There’s something to be said about being able to hammer out an entire roll of thirty-six exposures in a single location in a short period of time. Sure, it’s easy to do when you have a medium format roll with 15, 12 or 10 exposures. But thirty-six can be a bit trying. Thankfully, the introduction of multiple lenses helps, especially when you set limits on how many frames you can shoot with one focal length. This week we’re still in Milton (ish) [Esquesing actually] exploring one of the oldest churches in the region, Boston Presbyterian Church. And to add to this week’s excitement, these wereRead More →