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I’ll have to admit, ever since I went to Europe in 2015, I’ve wanted to add some sort of folding medium format camera to my collection. Something compact, shooting at least 6×4.5 or 6×6. And for a little while earlier this year, I had my eye on a Mamiya Six (the original one, not the modern rangefinder). After reading and searching, I realised that there were too many questions about the Mamiya Six and stopped looking. And then this beauty fell into my lap, and I’m glad it did. The Ikonta 521 might not be the best folding camera out there, but it is exactlyRead More →

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I have this memory that recently floated up to the surface of a camping trip I took many years ago with my dad and brother. We were camping at Sherkston Shores a camping resort half-way between Fort Erie and Port Colborne. While I have excellent memories of swimming in the old quarry and the three waterslides, but less clear is a visit we made one trip to the Welland Canal. We’re all unclear as to what lock we visited. My brother remembers stores. And there was also the stranger who gave us chocolate bars (through our dad) on that same trip. I’m sure buried inRead More →

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Out of all communities formed along the Welland Canal, both large and small, the ones that are most important to the Canal are the ports. It’s easy to tell which communities along the Canal remain or are former terminuses or access points onto the Welland Canals as most of them carry the title Port in their name. Welland for example offered through the first two Canals access onto the feeder canal that exited at Port Maitland (which I will not be covering today, sorry). While once-thriving communities with some level of municipal independence all save Port Colborne are a part of a larger city today,Read More →

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These days I will rarely work with Ilfosol 3, but it remains a developer that I always keep in the back of my mind. After learning how to develop my own black & white film from my good friend Julie using Kodak D-76, it would be a few more years before I started taking on the process full time. When I went into Burlington Camera to get all the equipment I needed to take on the daunting task some eight years ago, Joan pointed me towards Ilfosol 3 as a good starting point when you didn’t want to keep a large quantity of developer mixedRead More →

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When it comes to TLRs, there are plenty of choices out there and in many cases will cost you a fair amount of money. I’m talking Yashica, Minolta, Mamiya, and Rolleiflex plus several other upper-crust cameras. But for me, these were a second step (Yashica-12) and third step (Rolleiflex 2.8F) in my journey of Twin-Lens cameras. My first TLR is a true Soviet-era classic and a gateway drug into the wonders of both 120 film but also TLRs in general, and that is the Lubitel 2. Built by ЛOMO (LOMO) or Ленинградское Oптико-Mеханическое Oбъединение translated Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association one of the pillars of theRead More →

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Like the Canal, the industries that formed along the corridor needed to adapt and change as technology, power, and market demand changed throughout history. During the early day of the Canal, industries could get by working in a relatively small area. Local grain, timber, and materials were brought to the mills, and then the products were used within the local market. The Canadian Industry during the first part of the 19th Century remained local, colonial, provincial. They were dedicated mainly to the extraction and processing of raw materials. But the 1850s brought two significant changes, the first being an effective railway network that provided furtherRead More →

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If there is one lens in my entire lineup that I know and have used the least, the Rokkor 135/2.8 is that lens. I’ve had the lens for some time and decided to keep it after I got out of Minolta cameras as my primary camera kit but dug it out when I got the XG-M and XE-7 in close succession to each other. And I have used the lens a total of twice. Once on the XG-M and once on my a6000 at Disney. As you probably have seen when it comes to short telephoto lenses my focal length of choice is the 100Read More →

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The Welland Canal attracted a wide range of industry. But most of the industry used the Canal as a way to bring in power to drive the machines, transport in raw materials, and ship out finished products. But if there is a single industry that not only depended on the presence of the Canal but also provided goods and service to the Canal, it is the shipbuilding industry. Shipbuilding in Canada was nothing new; ships were the cars of the day as water was the highway. And with most the communities that existed in Canada were on the water. While Mills drove inland communities onRead More →

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After last month’s debacle with FilmWashi D and the ultra-thin base, I made a point to check Z before even loading it up into the camera, thankfully, the base while thin, is a little closer to what I’m used to working with JCH Streetpan and Rollei RPX films. Like D, Z is designed for aerial surveillance specifically for the mapping of vegetation. To aid in this, the film has a near-infrared capability. While this might not have been used in spy satellites but you never know, it could have been used in spy planes? Knowing that the film has infrared capabilities, I decided to shootRead More →

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Most will overlook the third Welland Canal, and with good reason, of all the canals it is the least interesting, the least preserved and is, to be honest, boring. The Third Canal came at a moment of transition, a move from a colonial province to a world power for Canada. Plus the end of the age of sail. The Second Canal by the 1850s had just completed their depth increase to put it in line with the improved navigation along the St. Lawerence, Detroit, and St. Clair Rivers. But the increased depth, increased size in ships only showed the need for an improved water sourceRead More →