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In: Musings
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Developing your film at home is both rewarding and frustrating at the same time and to add on an extra layer of complexity there is a lot of developers out there that you can use, especially in the black & white field. While certainly not as much as there used to be, there is still an excellent selection of developers to suit almost every person’s need, without having to dive deep into building your developers from base chemicals. Ultimately every photographer has a different taste but if you’re starting out with home development the choices may seem a little overwhelming so I’ll be breaking downRead More →

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In: Developer Review Blogs
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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 →

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In: Film Review Blogs
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Have you ever wanted to see outside of our visual spectrum? Well then maybe infrared photography is for you! While true Infrared films are long gone, these days we have a tonne of films that can, when properly filtered expose the infrared light. Among these films sits FPP Infrared B&W, the original film stock is unknown, but it does do exactly what it says on the tin, it is a film that can be shot both filtered and unfiltered and produces images that can only be described as magic! For this review, I went with a mixed approach to filtration, shooting the first roll withoutRead More →

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In: Photography
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When it comes to photography, last year I found that I was out shooting film for the purpose of a review or a YouTube video or something else. So with Christmas in the rearview and a rather tough week back to work it was time to get out and have a family adventure just for the sake of getting out of town for several hours and going for a drive. There are lots of amazing towns through Southern Ontario, many are touristy, but there are some true hidden gems. One of those gems is St. Mary’s, Ontario. I first learned about St. Mary’s through myRead More →

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In: Developer Review Blogs
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If there is the closest thing to a universal developer in the film photography world, that developer is Diafine. If you’re thinking, “Wait, aren’t all developers universal?” You are right; a B&W developer will develop many different film stocks. But it doesn’t often happen that two other film stocks, shot at different speeds, can be developed simultaneously. There are some examples of cross-over, but only a few. Diafine uses three main development times and a couple of unique combinations. These are shared across many different film stocks that allow you to develop multiple rolls shot multiple ways in the same tank. You can also shootRead More →

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In: Optical Review Blogs
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Regarding historically significant lenses, exact lens models like the Nikkor 85mm f/2 are abnormal. Usually, these historic lenses are designs like the Tessar, Petzval, and Planar. But in this case, this lens put Nikon on the map. Nippon Kogaku released the first 85mm f/2 as part of their original five-lens setup for the Nikon I. Although they also had versions in the LTM or M39 Mount. While Nikkor enjoyed popularity within Japan, they had yet to produce a camera that could be exported. But the lenses helped Nippon break out of the domestic market. The story goes that a chance meeting of two LIFE photographers,Read More →

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In: Film Review Blogs
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Have you already reviewed this film? The answer would be yes and also no. ORWO Wolfen NP100 is a film that is a variant of the cult favourite motion picture film, UN54+. However, the folks at Filmotec have added an anti-halation and anti-static layer to the film stock to make it better for still photography. And that’s enough of a change for me to warrant a full-on review. Now the history of ORWO is complicated; the company was formed from the original home of Agfa in the German town of Wolfen. When World War Two divided Germany in the post-war era, Wolfen ended up inRead More →

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In: Film Review Blogs
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This is only the second time I’ve reached a significant milestone in my ongoing reviews, the magic number of one hundred. And to be clear, I’ve done one hundred film reviews, not reviewed one hundred separate film stocks. And that’s because I’ve reviewed some rebadged films; sometimes, I knew it was a rebadge and then made a point not to go after that film stock again, notability ORWO films. I reviewed the four motion picture-specific films from ORWO as their Lomography rebadge. But in the case of Fomapan 100, I reviewed that first as KosmoFoto Mono 100 and then again as Fomapan 100. Agfa AviFotoRead More →

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In: Classic Camera Revival
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The world of SLRs changed with the release of the OM-System from Olympus. It proved you could have a professional, high-end SLR in a small package. Nikon, at the time, was producing high-end but large cameras. While the F and F2 were solid performers in the professional market, their Nikkormat line of cameras proved popular. It would make the perfect camera to scale down to produce the next generation of advanced consumer SLRs. It also helped the Nikon recently did their first update on the iconic F-Mount, introducing Automatic Indexing or AI. This mount was first introduced in the final two models of the NikkormatRead More →

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In: Film Review Blogs
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Of all the Vision3 films, 250D is the one I have the most experience with, having shot a couple of rolls and processed them at home. The problem was that when I processed them before, I did them cross-processed in C-41 chemistry. And they looked a little on the green side, but they looked good. And then, when I returned to this film stock with proper ECN-2 (home) chemistry, I was blown away. Under dull conditions, a snowstorm and bright light 250D produced amazing clean images. And it certainly was a significant shift from what I got from last month’s review of Vision3 500T! FilmRead More →