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Kit lenses: I have ones I like and others I’m not too fond of; of the ones I’m not too fond of, it’s the Canon Zoom Lens EF 28-80mm. After using the lens extensively last year for the Frugal Film Project, I realised that it has many things that could be improved in the optical quality and set out to get my hands on Canon’s elevated kit lens, the 28-105mm USM. I also used the lens while reviewing the Canon EOS Elan 7ne and A2. First introduced in 1992 as the standard kit lens for the EOS A2, it features the USM or Ultra SonicRead More →

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The one aspect of my photography that I rarely discuss is how and why I make images the way I do. I love talking about history, gear, and the technical aspects of the craft but not about why I pick the subjects, the composition and why I mainly shoot in black & white (mostly with film). The primary reason is that these are all highly subjective, each individual has their thoughts and options. In this case, all the options are valid and personal. And no, this is not about a hot take or a controversial option; it’s only my thoughts on the creative process. EvenRead More →

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I enjoy working with interesting and odd films, and while we’re blessed with a tonne of modern options that are sharp and fine-grained, that wasn’t always the case. You often traded sharpness for increased grain to allow for faster films. And there are still some older stocks that represent that trade-off. I hadn’t even heard of Kodak Recording Film 2475 until a follower on Instagram messaged me about the film stock, wondering if I had ever shot the stock. I had not, and they graciously offered to send me some rolls. I expected to receive some bulk-loaded film but received factory-loaded cassettes instead. After findingRead More →

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On the eastern side of the Iron Curtin, one of the biggest producers of photographic materials was ORWO, or Original Wolfen. ORWO was born out of the split between the Germanys and the companies that existed. Famously, there is Carl Zeiss, but there is also Agfa. While Agfa reformed in the west, its factories in Wolfen were formed under the new name ORWO. While ORWO did produce a series of photographic films for still photography, they also produced specialised motion picture films. The two standard negative films are N74+ and UN54+. UN54+ is the film that I’ll be reviewing today. Now, this isn’t the firstRead More →

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I haven’t had an F2 in my collection now for almost three years now, but when I was in Toronto in December and walking up to meet my friend Bill I got the idea that I would like to do a video review on the Nikon F2. It was the last professional mechanical camera released by Nikon and is a rock solid performer. And of course, Bill has a tonne of F2s in his toolkit so all I could do was ask and he loaned me out this lovely black Nikon F2 Phototomic (DP-1 finder). So I took it out at the start of FeburaryRead More →

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Like last year’s review of ORWO Wolfen NP100, ORWO Wolfen P400 is a version of ORWO N74+ but modified to better suit still-photography by removing the anti-halation layer. I had this film stock on my wish list and was able to find it last year through Freestyle. The one thing I also noticed is that there is a slight difference between the two film stocks to indicate that something else has been done to the film stock in the process of stripping that layer. Thankfully there is already a lot of existing times that are listed directly for P400. The first thing I noticed withRead More →

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Last year, I participated in a ‘hidden project. Usually, when I do a photography project, I have regular blog posts and a Flickr album all related to it. But not this one; this was another group project called 12 Months On Film; it ran on Instagram and was moderated by the Film Shooters Collective. The purpose was to get cameras off shelves, film out of fridges and enjoy photography. The guidelines were simple, shoot a different camera each month, you could use different film stocks, developers or all the same, but the camera had to be different each month. A rather nice change from theRead More →

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Back in 2023, I came across an exciting developer, Compard R09 Spezial, after some digging I discovered that R09 Spezial had nothing to do with Rodinal despite the name. It was Agfa Studionol, and when I wrote that review, it was mentioned to me in a comment that Bellini Foto produces a version of Studionol, Hydrofen. It took a bit of work, but I got a couple of small bottles of Hydrofen to write a review of the currently produced version of Studional. And true to my word in my review of R09 Spezial I made the point to do the majority of rolls usingRead More →

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Well, here we are at the end of another year, and you know in the rearview, 2024 was a good year. I felt that I was putting out posts and content at a more sustainable rate. I also felt that I was not always pressed for time each month in producing reviews. I got to check out some new film stocks, add some new favourite cameras, and explore some familiar and new places. The Best of 2024 This year, I consciously chose to reduce the number of reviews I did over the year. It was starting to get challenging to keep everything moving and outputRead More →

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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 →