Out of all the Doors Open Events run across Ontario my favourite and longest attended is Doors Open Hamilton. The city knows how to do the event right with lots of buildings both public and private buying into the event and specifically allowing and even welcoming photography. My first taste of doors open had been back in 2007 and I pretty much have attended almost all of the Hamilton events missing only a few in the past decade and a bit. Plus being on the weekend closest to my birthday it has also become somewhat of a Birthday Tradition. This year I had an awesomeRead More →

Back at the end of 2017, the film photography groups across Social Media began to talk about a photographic media producer in St. Petersburg in Russia called Silberra. While Silberra is not a new company they launched their Crowd Funding Campaign to expand their film manufacturing, introduce new film stocks, and expand their markets outside Russia and Eastern Europe. And while they encountered a pile of setbacks, but after waiting for nearly a year, we finally started to see some of the film starting to hit the market. Silberra Pan100 is the one film that I liked right off the mark, having done a first-lookRead More →

Taking a look at one of the most sought after films from Lomography, their Purple line of Colour film brings back a similar look to the colour infrared films like Kodak Areochrome. But despite the Chrome in the Name, Lomochrome Purple XR is a colour negative film. Well, enter Purple XR, which can be shot at three different speeds to produce different results. Sadly I only had one roll thanks to the Emulsive Secret Santa, so why not shoot 12 frames for each speed have the roll processed as usual and see what happens! If you also note, I’ve had to come up with differentRead More →

Ever since I started doing the scanning of my film my workflow has remained static, an Epson flatbed film scanner, the V500 first and the V700 currently. It worked, I got decent quality enough to get lab prints of my film scans up to 11×14 and be able to share around Flickr, 500px, Facebook, and Instagram. Now a dedicated film scanner is a different animal from a flatbed like the Epson. Names like Imacon, Plustek and Nikon I knew about, but they always were outside of my price tag. And as a photographer who shoots multiple formats and doesn’t have a lot of desk space,Read More →

Found in a dusty warehouse, based on where the film came from, Sweeden, Lomography promoted their Berlin 400 as an iconic cinematic film. 400-Speed, Black & White, and from East Germany. Well, that certainly narrowed it down to only one film, thankfully it is one that I did have planned to review at a later date, so why not discuss it under the Lomography Brand! The film, if you haven’t already guessed is ORWO N74, which made collecting developing formulas easy. Shooting cinematic film in still cameras is nothing new, at least for me, I still love shooting Double-X for urban work, so getting intoRead More →

Upper Canada was a Province created by the influx of immigrants, from the first loyalists who arrived during and after the American Revolution. But they were not the only group who would make Upper Canada home. As the Province grew, many different groups such as Germans, English, Irish, Scottish, Americans, French, and those who came as slaves, arrived owing to the rich cultural mix that we in Ontario still enjoy today. And many of these cultures owe their presence in the country to these early pioneers who often faced harsh conditions to carve a living out of the wilderness that made up of most ofRead More →

If you remember back to my review of the new release of Kodak TMax P3200 I mentioned that I wanted to give the film stock a better chance at impressing me, the review is a chance to see how the film behaves in different developers. I’d give it a chance to show me what it can do at 1600, 3200, and 6400 but all developed in Kodak’s TMax developer. The 3200 images are from the original review, so I made a point to get another two rolls and shoot them accordingly and then develop them both in TMax Developer. Please note, I use the termRead More →

From a snowstorm to a downpour, it was just before 7:30 in the morning as I walked out the door to my car. The time change had not messed me up too much, and I knew the area where I was driving. However, the night before freezing rain had come through. But the temperature had gone a few degrees above the freezing mark, so I figured it was safe by this point. Everything I had with me was waterproof, I had fast film, nothing below ASA-200, and even though it was dark, I could see some light through the deep clouds on the horizon. ItRead More →

Like Ultrafine Extreme 100, the 400-speed flavour is another mystery as of where the film stock comes from. But when it comes to a budget-friendly film, it might be best not to ask too many questions. Extreme 400 is a stock that I have little experience with before I started this review, I had shot a single roll several years back for a camera review. And while, like Kentmere 400 I expected Extreme 400 to be of similar style and class, with heavy grain and low contrast in general. However, the film stock quickly proved me wrong as being inexpensive but far from cheap. FilmRead More →

All stories have to start somewhere and to understand everything that happened after the Anglo-American War of 1812 one must learn about how the seeds of the struggles that are to come were first sewn. Pre-Confederation History is a bit of a mess, but there is a single touchstone date where everything stems from, and that is 1791. By 1791, the American Revolution was nearly a decade over, and many who still lived in the former colonies swore loyalty to the British Crown. Many did not wish to remain under a republic, and many Americans did not want these Tories in their country. And inRead More →