I will be honest, I’ve been trying to get out to Westfield Village all year because this year marks the 60th Anniversary of this hidden gem of a living history museum. While it isn’t staffed as often thanks to the changes that came down the pipe but they still maintain the property and make it accessible to the public while keeping site staff to a minimum. But I’ll let you in on a secret, I like the village when it’s quiet, it lets me soak in the history of the place. Like many other living history museums around Ontario, Westfield Heritage Village is a builtRead More →

I’m coming back for more, especially after being pleased with the results I got from the Formulary version of Kodak D-19. Like Formulary, Flic Film’s MQ-19 is a perfect clone of the classic high-contrast, fast-acting developer D-19, and while I am limited by what film stocks can be developed I did manage to find a few more options to run through the developer this time around include a few classic films that I did not include in the first time around. Like any good review, having a second chance with a developer gives a better chance to explore other options and get a better pictureRead More →

November 2024 marked a special birthday, that being Kodak Tri-X! Tri-X is one of those iconic films from Eastman-Kodak that has made a mark on both photography and photographers with a classic black & white look, contrast and versatility. Ever since I first shot Tri-X, I loved the results. While I don’t use it that often, primarily due to the cost of a roll of the film, I got a roll with my AM/FM membership re-subscription and decided to take it out to the historic town of Dundas, Ontario, with my Maxxum 9 and the 20mm f/2.8 lens I rated the film slightly over atRead More →

What makes this camera interesting is that while it fits in the general size and theme of the digicam realm, but it also is a little too new to fit into that first decade of the 21st century and it uses a CMOS rather than a CCD sensor. Now in full disclosure some of I have written about some of the ‘digicams’ that I have used in the past when they were still new. But they had long passed from my toolkit, so when I got my hands on the WX7 I decided that I would give this lovely piece of kit the proper treatment.Read More →

Last year, when Foma announced the release of a new film, I’ll admit, I was immediately interested. What drew me into the film is that it was an orthochromatic film and not sensitive to the red end of the visual spectrum. I’ve worked with these films, notably Ilford Ortho+ and Rollei Ortho 25 plus. The trouble with these is that they are slower films, rated at ASA-80 (or ASA-40) and ASA-25, respectively. I’m not one to shy away from slower films, but it can get rather dull and grey here in Ontario during specific points in the year. So, having an Ortho option rated atRead More →

I have far surpassed one hundred and fifty camera reviews and one hundred film reviews, my other two reviews being lenses and developers have only made it to the big fifty this year. If you read my previous post on lens reviews these are my least favourite. And while I rather enjoy creating film and camera reviews the most, developer reviews come in as the third favourite. The reason being is that I have the most amount of freedom connected to their creation. And while I’m working on a full post on how I write developer reviews, this post is about looking back at theRead More →

You may have a couple of questions when looking at this review. First, haven’t I already reviewed Kodak Tri-X? To answer that, yes, it was one of the earliest films I reviewed, but this isn’t 400TX. This is Tri-X Pan or 320TXP/TXP, a more classic version of the modern classic emulsion. The second is, how can it be a classic review if the emulsion is still being made? Again, the sheet format of 320TXP is still in production, but the roll film was discontinued in 2010. But I quickly learned that I shot this film a lot more in sheet format than roll film format,Read More →

In all fairness, McMaster University is an excellent institution but the title came to me as a bit of joke and play on the phrase, Jack of All Trades, Master of None. I honestly had other plans for August’s roll in the Frugal Film Project but due to various scheduling difficulties I found myself in the middle of the month without having shot the roll. Now I usually get the roll done as early as I can so that I have time to develop, scan and write. But life happens, plans change, and I ended up needing to get the roll done. So rather thanRead More →

Despite having visited many of the towns in my part of Ontario there are still some hidden gems that have been on my hit list but never actually gone to see despite having them on said hit list for so long. One of these places is the Hermitage, not the one in Russia, but rather the one in Ancaster, Ontario. If you haven’t heard of Ancaster that’s okay, it has been a part of Hamilton since 2001 despite being one of the earliest urban centres in the Greater Hamilton Area predating both Hamilton and Dundas. With my plan to sell off some of my lesserRead More →

Per Ardua Ad Astra – Through Adversity to the Stars As a personal rule, I tried hard to avoid using the same locations twice, but there are always exceptions. Last year I featured one of my favourite local museums, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario. While that post was directly about the museum itself, for this year the museum is merely a backdrop for something different, a celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force and Canadian Air Power through the century. The one thing that you’ll notice in this post is an expanding history section and also a selectionRead More →