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In: 1812:Revisited
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The first six months of the war had not gone as planned for the United States. Rather than a swift capture of Amherstburg, Niagara, and Kingston, the swift actions of the late Major-General Sir Isaac Brock resulted in the capture of Mackinac Island, Fort Detroit and Michigan Territory down to the River Raisin, and a repulse of the invasion across the Niagara River which cost him his life at the Battle of Queenston Heights. The death of General Brock was a significant blow, as his replacement, Sir Roger Hale Sheaffe, proved to be a far less effective administrator and military leader. It got bad enoughRead More →

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The simple matter was that neither the Americans nor the British were ready for a renewed conflict in North America. The British were fully committed to the invasion of Europe in the Peninsular War, secured Portugal, and invaded French-occupied Spain when the war broke out in North America. While many in the United States wanted to teach the British a lesson, they were not in the best position to fight a war. Even as the declaration of war made its way through the US Congress, the plans and preparations for the war were being made. The American plan was a coordinated three-prong assault across theRead 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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In: Developer Review Blogs
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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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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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I’m coming back for more, especially after being pleased with the results I got from the Formulary version of Kodak D-19. Like Formulary, Flic Film’s MQ-19 is a perfect clone of the classic high-contrast, fast-acting developer D-19, and while I am limited by what film stocks can be developed I did manage to find a few more options to run through the developer this time around include a few classic films that I did not include in the first time around. Like any good review, having a second chance with a developer gives a better chance to explore other options and get a better pictureRead More →

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If you have ever listened to me talk about my photographic journey you will have learned about how much my first trip to Montreal changed my photography. I can always tell my work from before to after my trip in my style, composition, love of black & white and of course square format. So when I brought my family back to the city earlier this month I wanted to make sure I not only explored the city with my digital camera but also with a pair of square format cameras. The first being the same camera I brought on that first trip, my Rolleiflex 2.8FRead More →

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While writing camera reviews remain a favourite of mine, second favourite is developers. Despite the challenges, it does allow me a bit more latitude in choices of films and gear. And while there are only a limited number of developers out there and some that are highly specialised or have limited film stocks that are available. But despite the limited numbers, there are in many cases a tonne of clones out there that allow me to fully explore these developers. I’ll be walking through how I write and work through reviewing film developers as I write my review of Flic Film MQ-19. The main reasonRead More →

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In: Between Darkness & Light
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When you hear the term subway, you tend to think about long stretches of tunnels that run trains mostly underground. But that is only sometimes the case; if you look at the TTC’s subway system, a great deal runs above ground but below grade. And that’s the key; you can also call roads that run under train tracks ‘subways’, but what does this all have to do with Rochester? Context being everything, the Rochester Subway, or simply “The Subway”, was a rapid transit system that mainly ran below grade. It was one of many rapid transit systems that grew in the United States through theRead 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 →