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One of the more interesting parts of B&W film photography is the ablity to adjust how the film behaves. There are many different ways of adjusting how the film looks, you can over or under expose the film, or push/pull the film in development. You also have various different developers to adjust how the film looks and different dilutions. But there is also the ideas of adding coloured filters to your lens to change what light and how much light hits your film. Now it might seem weird to put coloured glass over black & white film, but it can adjust and change how differentRead More →

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Last year, there was an explosion of new film releases from a rebirthed ORWO; while some are variants of their popular black & white motion picture stocks, they also showed off two new colour films. There is still a lot of controversy around ORWO, especially in their future and future film manufacturing capacities. This month, I’m covering one of the two colour film stocks ORWO released last year, NC500. According to the ORWO website, NC500 is based on a classic Agfa colour motion picture film stock. The same film stock used to film the 1985 film, Out of Africa. But this is a new filmRead More →

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If you’re going to start the year off with a bang, you should go all in! Despite this year starting almost the same way as last year, I decided not to let that stop me. Visiting Niagara-On-The-Lake was initially planned for December 2023. Rain stopped that, so we moved it to January to start the new year. Niagara-On-The-Lake is much larger today, but I spend most of my time in the historic old town where we’re visiting today! The charming historic old town of Niagara-On-The-Lake owes its current existence to two key points in local history: the American occupation and destruction of 1813 and aRead More →

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A particular classification of camera always elicits a nod of understanding; these are cameras with a mark of quality and precision. Names like Rollei, Hasselblad, Zeiss, and of course, Leica. Although through my work on this review, I have often found that not all Leica’s are treated with the same equal respect, and among many of the more snobbish Leica collectors and users, the M4-2 and M4-P are the ones that are seen as the redhead cousins of the classic M-Series of rangefinders. These cameras indeed hold a much higher space in my mind because of their historical significance in Leica history and Canadian history,Read More →

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While developing a colour-negative film is not as exciting as slide film, it is still satisfying. And while some might be hesitant these days to risk processing colour film in a home environment due to the increasing price and lower availability of colour-negative stocks, it is a way to help reduce the cost. And if you are a bit wary of the process, don’t worry. I was also when I first started, and while I did mess up the first set of four sheets of Ektar (yes, 4×5 Ektar), I soon figured out where I made my mistakes. Colour Negative processing uses those processes ifRead More →

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There have been a lot of great releases of developers onto the market of late, including refreshes and clones of some of my favourites. And this won’t be the last time you see a clone of a beloved developer in this series. But with the dull grey days of winter starting to pile on, now is the time to begin using developers designed to help push development and ensure your fast films keep their fine grain. But there’s something that sets Bellini EcoFilm developer apart from other Xtol clones, such as Adox XT-3, which is that the concentrate comes in liquid form rather than powder.Read More →

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The story of Canada is filled with both myth and legend. And when it comes to the Anglo-American War of 1812, Canada has made itself look like the victor. Of course, I thought the same thing for the longest time, having learned about the tales of Isaac Brock and Laura Secord. They together single-handedly won victory for Canada over the Americans. But history is far more complex and often messy, especially when two sides claim victory; the other side often will ignore it as a footnote in a broader global conflict, and a fourth group are still angry at their treatment following the war. ButRead More →

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In the world of speciality lenses, there is nothing more specialized than perspective-control or tilt-shift lenses. The idea was to give 35mm photographers some movement control that large and medium format photographers used to adjust perspective. While the level of control could never be as discrete as with a large format camera, a perspective-control or PC lens provided some form of tilt and shift to grant a photographer a way to recompose an image without moving the camera body itself. Nikon’s original release in 1962 as part of the Nikon F system presented the world with the PC-Nikkor 35mm f/3.5, a relatively simple lens withRead More →

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If there’s something I’ve learned over the past six months is that the quote “The best camera you have is the one you have with you” is true, and the camera that almost everyone has is their mobile phone. The challenge for July from my friends over at Embrace the Grain podcast was 127 film, but I don’t shoot 127 film. Well, I have, but these days I don’t have any 127 cameras, and the film can be prohibitively expensive. They did cook up a plan B, using your mobile phone. But not just your phone’s stock camera, but one of the many film simulatorRead More →

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It has been long since I smelt the acrid odour of black powder and smoke drifting over the battlefield. But a couple of weekends back I got to attend my first Napoleonic reenactment since the Grand Tactical in 2019. And while the event hosted at Fort George in Niagara-On-The-Lake wasn’t a dedicated 1812 event, there were plenty of units that normally attend 1812 events. But the, Fort George was standing in for a frontier fort on the Spanish peninsula built by the French. While the lines were certainly smaller than what I’m used to at such events, with broad support not only from the pocketRead More →