35mm
Lomography 800: High speed film drenched in warmth
If you're up for some low light color film photography, and you want to shoot at box speed, your options for high speed film stocks may be limited. My facts may not be right on this, but as far as I can tell, for film stock currently in production your only options will be Kodak Portra 800, CineStill 800, or the Lomography Color 800. Although these ... Read more
Trying Black and White Film for the first time
I started my film development journey with color film. This wasn't by any specific choice; all the rolls of film I had access to were in color at the time. Also the process of developing color film didn't seem difficult. Especially, after I watched a few wonderful tutorials from Ted Forbes and Eduardo Pavez Goye, the whole process seemed straight ... Read more
With all the glory from the 80's: The Ricoh FF-3AF
The golden age of photography, according to a half-hearted Internet research I performed before writing this article, is considered to be from the 1930's through the 50's. This time frame makes sense if you consider the amount of progress that was made within the period. Cameras became lighter, portable, accessible, and most importantly image ... Read more
The Sears 35|RF: One that barely fits in my pocket.
Here's another thrift store find worth writing about: the Sears 35|RF. This compact, fully manual rangefinder comes from Sears, the now (almost) defunct superstore. Holy Sears! Unlike most people in the west who grew up with Sears almost everywhere, I grew up in Africa where there were absolutely none. My first encounter with a Sears was in 2008 at ... Read more
Konica Auto S2: Heavy, Impressive and, Worthy
I wish I had an interesting story about how I came to own this camera. Truth is, I dont. This story just happens to be the same old boring one I keep telling: I walk into a thrift store, find a camera on the shelf, pay for it, and take it home. Of course, at the thrift store, I unlatched the leather case that contained the camera, took a partial ... Read more
Wonderfully Odd: Fujica AZ-1 and the Mamiya Sekor Lens
I'm always on the hunt for cheap cameras. As far as I'm concerned, there's really nothing as exciting as finding a very good camera with a sub $20 price tag. It seems I have developed a craving that makes it impossible for me to drive by a thrift store without walking in to see what they have on the camera shelves. Call it FOMO if you want, but ... Read more
Getting impressed with the Yashica Electro 35 GSN
While preparing to write this post, I kept asking myself a rather simple yet somehow difficult question: "What I can say about this camera that hasn't been said elsewhere already?". Indeed it is a difficult question to answer; because, well, this camera I'm about to review appears to be quite legendary. I don't need to create any fake ... Read more
Darkroom Horror: The roll that came out empty
There are many reasons why people may want to develop their own film: for some, it allows them to fully appreciate their art, for some, it puts them fully in control of their workflow, and for others, like me, it's pretty much a cost saving measure — if you don't count the cost of my time. Regardless of the reasons for doing this yourself, ... Read more
Canon Canonet 28: The beauty that lies in simplicity
My experience with the Yashica MG-1, opened me up to the world of rangefinders. Although it had its flaws, I made me appreciate the fact that, at least, range finders were accessible, and not necessary expensive troublesome relics. In fact, anytime I walked into any of my favourite thrift stores, I had this secret yearning to find a rangefinder ... Read more
The weird and interesting: Chinon Infrafocus 35F-MA
While lugging around my Canon AFM35, I received a lot of compliments from folk who were just happy to see someone still shooting on film. Generally, it seems everyone has moved on and no one shoots on film anymore. This meant that, people had lots of questions along lines of: "do they still make film?", and "are the labs still ... Read more
A pleasant surprise with the Canon AF35M point and shoot
At this stage in my "cheap camera" photography journey, my quest was to score good SLRs. My motivation, of course, was driven by a false belief that SLRs are the only camera form factors that could deliver quality images. This notion was probably ingrained by how all professional photographers I saw — almost everywhere — used ... Read more