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There are a couple of highly specialised and mysterious developers out there, both made by the same company. While most people are drawn towards Diafine (which I plan on reviewing next year), Acufine is the cousin of that magic bullet developer. Like Diafine, Acufine’s chemistry is a trade secret; even the datasheets are redacted in that sense. But Acufine is a rare bird; it has the capability to increase the speed of most film stocks. But without all the drawbacks of push processing, increased grain, over the top contrast. While I have worked with Acufine before the stuff was way out of date, and IRead More →

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When it comes to Living History museums, I have a long enjoyment of these sites. From jumping in Pioneer Puddles at Upper Canada Village to putting on musketry displays before Waterloo’s 200th. One of my favourites is Westfield outside of Hamilton, Ontario. While smaller and quieter, it has some of the oldest buildings from this part of the province! And while the museum aspect is officially closed for the time being, I learned that the site itself remains accessible and without reservations! So I took an early morning visit to avoid any major crowds and got some beautiful morning light. While every building on theRead More →

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If there is one lens that completely changed my outlook on photography, this is that lens. I know I usually don’t say that gear can make you a better photographer, and I’m not saying that this lens made me a better photographer. But it did help me realise and execute my vision. I use these two photos as an example of that, in the first photo, shot in 2005 on a K-M Z2 digital camera at the widest angle I knew exactly what I wanted to capture. That grand scale of the Hearn generating station, but I couldn’t with the gear I had. So whenRead More →

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What makes this week a bit more interesting is that almost this time last year, Heather and I were on vacation and driving along the Niagara Parkway, a favourite drive for us that is perfectly safe to do even during a global pandemic (but unlike last year, the end is now very much insight). Like last year, I was shooting my Nikon FM loaded with Fomapan 100. But I learned from last year and brought a slightly longer lens and picked a different developer! Long before the arrival of the Europeans, the earliest human settlers in the Niagara Region, those of the Neutral Nation thatRead More →

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If there is one film that has achieved a little bit of a cult following these days it’s Adox Silvermax. Silvermax was the first true film to come out of the renewed Adox Fotowerks GmbH factory in Bad Sarrow, Germany and its parent company Fotoimpex. Based on a classic Agfa film, which some people think is rebadged Agfa Scala 200 (a legendary B&W reversal film), it has a higher than normal silver content and when paired with Adox Silvermax Developer presents a classic B&W look. If you were a fan of the older Adox and Efke films, then Silvermax will be your jam (I Hope).Read More →

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Despite the title of this week’s entry in the project, nothing actually has died, but I’ll bet it drew you into the post! This week we’re back in Halton Hills at another historical site. You will remember back earlier in the project; we visited Georgetown, Ontario, a part of Halton Hills, today. This week we’re a bit north of the historic community in another one of those settlements that sprung up, Silvercreek and specifically the historic Scotsdale Farm. I first learned about this place from two good friends, Bill Smith and Andrew Chapman and had a chance to visit under less than ideal conditions atRead More →

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Am I crazy for reviewing a camera that you can have for a song? Maybe? But I’m out here to talk about a camera that many will pass over due to age and the slow autofocus speeds. But when it comes to cameras in the history of photography, the F-401 fits in a strange little niche often forgotten next to the more advanced cameras of the day and, of course, the almighty F90/N90(x/s). And while I have given away the F90, and it gets far more use with its new owner, when I saw the F-401 offered up for free, I jumped on the camera.Read More →

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I can always remember seeing this massive building off in the distance going to and from Guelph when visiting my Opa. When I first got to see the building up close, it wasn’t as big as I thought it was. In fact, it was rather small. I’m talking about the former Guelph Jail. I’ve known it has been abandoned and closed for some time, and back in the day, I always contemplated trying to sneak in under cover of darkness. But things never aligned properly, I did get a chance to see inside during the one Guelph Doors Open event I attended in 2009. TheRead More →

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When I originally planned out this week of the project, I had a completely different name for the entry, “The Second Wedge”, after Uxbridge’s position in the Second Wedge of the Oak Ridges Moraine and a local craft brewery. But after spotting an interesting statue downtown, which I initially thought was another war memorial, I decided to change the name. It was not another war memorial, not in the cenotaph sense that many communities across Ontario feature in their downtown; this was a memorial to Samuel Sharpe. A Lieutenant-Colonel in World War One, Distinguished Service Order recipient, Member of Parliament, and dead at 45 byRead More →

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Let me start this by saying that DD-X and I have not had the best of relationships. The first time I used it I wasn’t happy with my results and decided that I was never going to touch the stuff again. But hey, almost every filmstock and developer are worth a second glance. DD-X, like its Kodak cousin, TMax developer was initially designed for use with the Delta range of films, specifically Delta 3200. Ilford has two versions of this developer, Ilfotec DD which is designed mainly for automated film processors that will use a dedicated replenisher and used in the stock formulation. White DD-XRead More →