No strangers on this bridge, Lomography Potsdam 100 is the second film released in their Kino series of films. Potsdam 100 is ORWO UN54 a film that I have shot a lot with for the past several years. Compared to N74, UN54 is super sharp, fine-grained and has a fantastic tonality and one I have only developed in a limited number of developers, so I’m looking forward to trying it out in different developers. Designed as Eastern Europe version of Kodak Plus-X and it certainly shows. What struck me is that the film is marked as Lomography Potsdam in the rebate area, which means thatRead More →

I had been wondering how long it had been since I had last visited the Halton County Radial Railway Museum, well it hasn’t yet been a decade since my last trip in 2011. So when I heard that a group of folks from the Toronto Film Shooters were heading to a TTC Streetcar barn open house, I had the urge to go and photograph streetcars as well. The trouble was that I had to be at church at 3 pm on Saturday to run sound for a wedding. A trip into the city would be out of the question, then I remembered that I hadRead More →

It’s not every day that a new film jumps into the market without some pre-release hype, but leave it to CatLABS to slip under the radar with new film stock. In their description of the film, they state that it is in the spirit of Panatomic-X so who am I to skip over the film, I wanted to shoot it now! The film is rated at ASA-80 so a couple stops faster than the classic Kodak emulsion but something I could work with and even pull if needed. I think the film comes from the New55 Atomic-X which is also has a little bit ofRead More →

When it comes to a winning colour film for the modern film age, look no further than Kodak Portra 400. The stock, a combination of the best of the older VC and NC stocks, the film burst onto the scene as part of the early film resurgence from Kodak. When it comes to fast colour films and money is no object then you want to shoot Portra 400, it’s like the Tri-X of the colour film world, you can push and pull the film all you want, even on the same roll! Which makes it in my mind the perfect film for digital shooters toRead More →

If there is a singular organisation that is synonymous with the Patriot Wars and the Upper Canada Rebellion as a whole that group is the Hunter’s Lodge. The group grew out of the Frise Chassure, a group founded by the Lower Canada Patriotes under Joseph-Louis Papineau. Papineau had been waging his rebellion against Lower Canada out of Vermont. And while Papineau saw no better success than those in the west, the use of a central group and the model of a secret society had kept the group much better aligned with the goals of their rebellion. It also attracted the attention of Charles Duncombe whoRead More →

The continuing rebellion shifted after Pelee Island, as the leadership changed and William Lyon MacKenzie separated himself while living in Rochester while out on bail from his arrest in Buffalo following the evacuation from Navy Island. The Rebel Cause fell under the leadership of the Council of Thirteen. A mixed group of Canadian and American sympathisers. However, their actions against Upper Canada and their behaviour in the American cities had forced them to seek shelter in the rural areas along the border. Charles Duncombe had been working in the east and was spreading a new secret society based on a French-Canadian society to spread theRead More →

Ektar 100 is one of my favourite colour films, and that’s saying a lot because I don’t shoot a lot of colour film. But when it comes to Ektar 100, it is the first of many ‘new’ colour films to come out of Kodak since I first started shooting film. The name itself, a historical word in the Kodak Dictionary is an acronym for Eastman Kodak TessAR the lenses produced between 1936 and 1962 and I own a 203mm Ektar which I still run on my Crown Graphic. Then it became a line of professional films rated at 25, 100, and 1600 starting in 1989,Read More →

There’s always a certain amount of excitement when a new film hits the market, and I couldn’t hold it in and wait to discuss CatLABS X Film 80 in its full review. So having not picked up a camera the whole Easter Weekend, I was, that Monday getting the shakes and needed my chemical fix. Having obtained the brick of film the week before and having ten rolls available to me, I figured why not check out a single roll. So I loaded it up into my trusty Rolleiflex 2.8F with a Green-1 filter just for kicks. As soon as the film came out ofRead More →

Like the speed test, I ran on TMax P3200 I decided it was only fair to give Delta 3200 a fair shake as well, but to make things more interesting, I decided to run it through in Medium Format instead of 35mm. After my review last year of Delta 3200, I decided that the film responded best in Ilford Microphen. Microphen has become one of my favourite developers to push or pull processing fast films. Like the TMax speed test, I’ll shoot the film at 1600, 3200, and 6400 and develop each in Ilford Microphen. Note that while I firmly believe that Delta 3200 isRead More →

In Post-War British North America, the British authorities took a two-pronged approach to the defences of their North American holdings. The first through a series of upgrades to the defensive forts along the border and the bolstering of the British garrisons, the second would be to prevent another war through a series of negotiated agreements and treaties. The idea would be to shore up the start of better relationships and fill in the gaps left by the Treaty of Gent. If you have read the Treaty of Ghent and understand its context you’ll quickly realise Ghent could not be the final say for normal relationsRead More →