Classic Camera Revival (Page 13)

Fast films, it’s something we in Canada need to work with a lot because of our long dark cold winters. But what is a fast film? Well, that depends on your historical context. The first version of Ilford HP released in 1935 was only rated at ISO-160, by the second iteration in 1939 it was boosted to ASA-200. It wasn’t until 1960 with the release of HP3 that it reached the speed of ASA-400. And today the list of fast films is lengthy and we could spend hours talking on every film we’ve shot, so we’re going to drop it down to only eight stocks.Read More →

When it comes to cameras there are many that hold a place in photographic history and in the case of Twin Lens Cameras, there are many that stand out as a fixed point in development history. And in the case of the twin-lens reflex camera market than Franke & Heidecke. Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke established the company in 1920 as an optical instrument manufacture, but they moved quickly into cameras and began to develop what would become the industry standard for TLR cameras. Now the TLR is not a new concept the first one being produced in 1880, but the two Germans were aboutRead More →

We’ve discussed large format on several occasions on CCR in the past, however, we’ve never done a basics episode for those wanting to get into large format. Well never fear, that is exactly what Alex and James are going to discuss today, so grab your notebook and ready to go big! Camera Types You can put all large format cameras into a single category of ‘large format’ or simply ‘view camera’ because you are mostly using a piece of ground glass to look directly through the lens so it’s almost what you see is what you get. However, there are differences between these view camerasRead More →

On today’s episode, John is going to dig into one of his favourites if not rare and annoying cameras in his collection, the Kodak Medalist. A unique camera with a unique place in the history of camera equipment and the American photographic industry. The Medalist grew out of the need for a high-quality camera that was both robust and American built for the US Military. The year was 1939, World War Two had started with the Japanese invasion of mainland China and the Nazi invasion of eastern Europe. And while America remained neutral, war production cut off the source of high-quality cameras from these twoRead More →

John and Bill sit down to talk to Stephen Dowling, the man behind the website Kosmo Foto and the driving force behind bringing Kosmo Foto Mono 100 to the market. The three sit down around our interview table to discuss everything about the site, how it came to be, the man behind the site, and the reasons behind bringing Mono 100 to the market. Along with the inspiration behind the awesome Soviet Style graphics. If you haven’t visited Kosmo Foto, we certainly recommend visiting and following the awesome content. You can follow Kosmo Foto through the followings means Website – kosmofoto.com Twitter – @kosmofoto InstagramRead More →

Continuing with our love of chemistry in part two we dig into some of the older and stranger developers. While many of these are speciality they are rather common in our own chemistry cabinets and they include the likes of the alphabet soup that is HC-110, the oldest commercial developer Rodinal, and the rather toxic Pyrocat-HD. Kodak HC-110 Kodak’s HC-110 developer is a strange creature, released with little fanfare in 1962 with a small article in a photography magazine, the developer became an instant classic. It’s best known as the developer of choice for Ansel Adams. And while most Kodak Developers had the letter DRead More →

How do Developers Work? Before you can get into the actual developers, we should recap how developers and black & white film photography works anyways. We’re going to put on our lab coats and try to explain this process as simple as possible. Black & White film is made up of individual crystals, the crystals are known as silver halide (2Ag+Br–) is made up of a positive silver ion and a negative bromide ion. These crystals while theoretically would be perfect, in reality, there are small imperfections in each crystal. The crystals are naturally light sensitive, however, when they are bombarded by photons (light) theRead More →

Nikon Series E Zoom 70~150mm 1:3.5 The Series E lenses from Nikon often get a bad rap, and while many are not the best, there’s nothing wrong with them. And for John the 70-150mm zoom lenses makes for a great budget tele-zoom. While it does suffer from zoom creep with the push/pull design there’s nothing wrong with these optics. And while the f/3.5 isn’t the fastest in the group that is a constant f/3.5 no matter where you are on the focal lengths. Lens Specs: Make: Nikon Model: Nikon Series E Zoom 70~150mm 1:3.5 Focal Length: 70-150mm Aperture Range: f/3.5-f/32, 7 Blades Optics: 12 ElementsRead More →

The 28th of April marked two major events, the first being the official Spring Meetup for the Toronto Film Shooters Meetup which this year was hosted by our good friends at Burlington Camera, under the direction of James McFarlane and the first event being hosted by Burlington Camera which is celebrating their 60th Anniversary this year, for Worldwide Pinhole Day! The event saw only three pinhole cameras in use, two being actual pinholes and three folks (Alex included) used a pinhole adapter. We’d like to thank Burlington Camera for not only planning and hosting the event but allowing us to record, even though the audioRead More →

There’s a little category of cameras between manual focus and point-and-shoot. These cameras, often mistaken for Point-And-Shoot are Manual Focus, have little automation, and require you to guess the focus. We’re calling them Scale Focus Cameras and on today’s show, the CCR gang has a wide range of cameras from semi-automatic to toy. Voigtländer Bessa 66 Back when the Bessa name indicated some form of medium format folding camera, the Bessa 66 is often called the Baby Bessa. For John, this camera is special, produces amazing black & white images. The camera itself was a gift from John’s friend David Kent. He has a post-warRead More →