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Back in 2005, I was an avid attendee of the Presbyterian Young People’s Society (PYPS). Through the inspiration of fellow photographer and brother-in-Christ Rob Ellis, I started taking a camera to these events. It was through PYPS that I began to this wild journey as a photographer. But back in 2005, digital proved out of my price range, so I rocked the film. And on a whim, I picked up a roll of Ilford XP2 Super from my local Foto Source Store. I was super excited to have gotten a roll of black & white film. My parents were less so, wondering where I couldRead More →

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When you’re in the film photography community, you celebrate things differently. I mean, sure you’d do the usual birthday traditions with your family but among your film photographer friends, you get together for a photo walk. No? Maybe it’s just the Toronto Film Shooters group. The morning started particularly cold, but at least it kept the traffic light or it was actually the early hour. The trouble with being in Milton there’s no easy way I’d like to drive into Toronto, plus having to leave my car somewhere and needing to loop back to the start doesn’t always jive with my general flow of theRead More →

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When it comes to Canon cameras, you can count the number of times they’ve been featured on the one hand. I’ll admit that I am a Nikon guy, but I couldn’t say no when this beauty was offered up. The Canon EOS 650, while a fairly plain and no-nonsense camera, is a significant part of the history of photography. The EOS 650 is the first autofocus offering from Canon, and the lens mount it introduced changed the company’s direction. And while I was a little wary of the camera, it performed beautifully. It did take a bit of time to figure out some of theRead More →

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There is a great deal of wisdom in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America; I am talking about the line of text that reads, in order to form a more perfect union. The 1850s had been rough on the state of the Canadian government, and as the decade turned, it looked like it was not going to be getting any better. The scandals that rocked the governments of Sir Francis Hincks and Sir Allan Napier MacNab had damaged the reputation of the Liberal-Conservatives and even trickled down into the Reform movement as well. But things looked a little better whenRead More →

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I have a long and strange history with Eastman High Contrast Positive Film II, AKA Eastman 5363. When the Film Photography Project began to hand-roll and resell the strange and specialised motion picture films I started working extensively with it and if you’re a long-time reader of the blog you’ll recognise the film stock from previous entries. I have probably done enough with the film to write a full out film review on the stock, but that would be old news. So, having one more roll in my possession, thanks to Alex Smith, I decided to give it the one-roll treatment, one final time. FilmRead More →

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When you compare the age of Canada’s army to that of other nations, our military is relatively young. As a nation of just over 150 years old, we depended almost entirely on our defence from the home government, France first and then England. And while a bulk of the soldiers in what would become modern-day Canada were regular professional soldiers and sailors, several locally raised regiments came to the defence of the territory should the need arise. The Canadian militia and Provincial ‘feasible’ troops fought in the War of 1812 and again during the Upper Canada Rebellion and Patriot Wars with varying degrees of success.Read More →

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It seems these days the hottest craze among the hipsters and celebrities is using the premium compact 35mm cameras of the 1980s through early 2000s. And while some cameras carry a steep price-tag, others just don’t have the same street cred. What I mean by that is that you don’t see those cameras your childhood (if you’re of a particular vintage) being hoisted on the Instagram feeds of celebrities during their seemingly perfect lives. I’m not one to drop 500$ on a point-and-shoot, so when I was offered up a Pentax Espio 115M I figured what the heck! After speaking about these cheap and cheerfulRead More →

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Across the British Commonwealth and in Canada specifically, no other British monarch is as widely celebrated at Queen Victoria. Secondly only to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II for the length of her reign. The two queens share a lot in common beyond familial relations. Both never expected to take the throne, born Alexandria Victoria on the 24th of May 1819, daughter of Prince Edward Augustus and grand-daughter to King George III. At birth, Victoria sat fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. At only a year old, both her father and grandfather passed, leaving Victoria in the care of her over-protective mother.Read More →

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The history of Svema film or the entire photographic history from the former Soviet Bloc is a topic for a blog post all on its own. In the case of Svema, they had been producing black & white film for many years before the Second World War. However, they did not have a colour film. When the war happened, and Russia rolled through Eastern Germany, they captured many camera and film manufacturers, including Agfa. From the Agfa plant, they got their hands on colour films and produced Svema Color 125. The film has a colour palette all of its own and something that you don’tRead More →

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The film that started the whole Svema craze with the Film Photography Project, Svema Foto 200. Свема is a film stock that is relatively unknown here in North America unless you are of course fans of the Film Photography Podcast. The name comes from the combination of two Russian words, Светочувствительные Материалы, translated means Photosensitive Materials. While Svema collapsed when the Soviet Union died in the 1990s, another Eastern European film manufacture, Astrum, continues the legacy of Svema using some of the old machinery in a new factory in Shostka, Ukraine. Now I did try a roll or two of Foto 200 when it firstRead More →