B&W development, gear, shooting techniques and film industry news.
78 article(s) found
Open any development data sheet from Ilford or Kodak and you'll almost always see the same column highlighted: 20°C (68°F). In a Quebec winter, when tap water runs at 14 or 16°C, that reference point…
Quebec's landscapes are generous, but not always cooperative. An autumn morning in the Laurentians, with low sun raking across red maples and dense shadow still pooling in the ravines, can easily…
The sun's down, the tripod's set, the meter says 30 seconds. You fire the shutter, wait it out, drive home, develop the roll. And the negative is underexposed. That's reciprocity failure, and it's…
Variable contrast paper changed the way darkroom work gets done. Before it, you kept five or six boxes of graded paper on the shelf, one per contrast grade, and you juggled between them depending on…
Starting out in film photography in Quebec can feel isolating. Where do you find film? Who do you trust with your rolls? Are there even other people nearby who care about this stuff? The short answer…
When people talk about sports and action photography, the digital reflex is to lean on continuous autofocus and sort out the keepers afterward. With a manual SLR, the whole logic shifts. You predict…
Medium format usually draws people in through the hardware, the mechanical beauty of a Hasselblad, the surprising compactness of a Fuji GS645. But once you've got a camera in hand, the film question…
There's something that stops you in your tracks about holding a strip of developed slides up to the light. No scanning, no inversion, no interpretation: the image is right there, positive…
Infrared film photography isn't reserved for specialists or experimenters chasing novelty effects. It's an accessible practice, with two film stocks still in production as of 2024, filters that are…
The used enlarger market is a strange place. Machines that sold for thousands of dollars new in the 1980s sometimes show up for $50 in somebody's basement, or for $800 on eBay because the seller…
Most used enlargers you find on Marketplace or analog forums come fitted with a basic condenser head. Often it's the manufacturer's entry-level model, sometimes in decent shape, sometimes with a bulb…
You've got a Hasselblad 500C/M, a Mamiya RZ67, a Bronica SQ, or an old Rolleiflex that produces beautiful negatives. Maybe you've been scanning them, which is fast enough, but something feels…
A previous Focusia article covered the European and Japanese used enlarger market: Durst, Meopta, LPL, Kaiser. All solid machines, and they earned their place. But if you're shopping on eBay, Kijiji…
The developer gets all the attention. You time it to the second, dial in the temperature to within a fraction of a degree, debate dilutions at length. Then the stop bath arrives, dispatched in thirty…
Double exposure is one of those techniques that looks stunning in portfolios and feels completely baffling in practice. First attempts usually end in confusion: two images badly layered on top of…
There are two distinct families of black-and-white emulsions on the market, and the difference between them is frequently misunderstood, even by photographers who've been shooting film for years…
For years, the conventional wisdom among film photographers came down to one simple rule: keep your film in carry-on, never check it, and if you're shooting under ISO 800 you're basically fine. That…
In July 2026, the news moved quietly through analog forums and newsletters, but what it actually means is worth sitting with for a moment. Chris Vandebroek, co-founder of Optik Oldschool, finalized…
Half-frame has been making a real comeback over the past few years, and Lomography is right there for it. Launched on July 15, 2026, the Half-Frame Simple Use Reloadable comes in two versions: a…
Some brands you rediscover with the nagging feeling you've been missing out for years. ORWO is one of them. Not a newcomer by any stretch: a century-old factory, a dense history, genuine…
January 2024. ADOX publishes an announcement on their German website that quickly makes the rounds of analog forums and newsletters: a second color film is in development, called Color Mission…
The print is done, the paper is dry, you hold it up to the light. It's good. But it could be better — deeper, more permanent, or genuinely different in color. That's where chemical toning comes in. A…
Pinhole photography strips the whole process down to its bare essentials: a light-tight box, a tiny hole in a piece of aluminum, and a piece of film. No glass, no lens, no focusing. And yet the…
CineStill 800T is probably the most talked-about color film stock of the last decade, and the reasons have as much to do with its quirks as its strengths. Those orange-red halos around bright light…
When CineStill announces "the next big step" for color film, the natural assumption is a new emulsion. A successor to the 800T, a long-requested ISO 400 stock, something you can actually load into a…
Rolls piled in a shoebox. Unidentified sleeves that have been kicking around for a decade. A plastic bag that smells vaguely of acetic acid. If any of that sounds familiar, you're not alone. Negative…
Flash is probably the single thing that intimidates people most when they come back to film. With digital you adjust on the fly, check the histogram, shoot again. With film, the flash fires, the…
If you've been printing your own black-and-white negatives at home for a few years, the question eventually surfaces: what about color? The short answer is yes, it's doable. The honest answer is that…
Caffenol isn't some lockdown kitchen experiment that went viral. It's a documented developer with roots in the 1990s, tested on thousands of rolls by a serious community of film photographers. The…
The Pentax 17 landed in June 2024 with a lot of noise around it. A brand-new half-frame compact, from an established manufacturer, with a fresh HD-coated lens and a body genuinely sized for a jacket…
Almost everyone who spends time in the darkroom eventually asks the same question: is it really worth making the move to fiber-base paper, or does RC do the job just as well? The honest answer is…
Redscale is an old darkroom trick that's been circulating in analog circles long before Harman Technology decided to package it as a finished product. The idea is straightforward: you expose a color…
Some techniques you stumble onto by accident, usually while trying to solve a specific problem. A negative that's too contrasty, a concert shot that's half a stop underexposed, a drawer full of…
Kentmere has always carried a reputation as Ilford's budget line, the film you grab when you're a student counting pennies or when you don't want to burn a roll of HP5+ on something uncertain. The…
Portrait work is probably where film still makes its strongest case. Not for nostalgic reasons, but practical ones: the way certain stocks render skin tones, the way a medium format negative absorbs…
Since December 2023, Harman Technology has been doing more than manufacturing Ilford black-and-white films. The company is now producing its own color emulsions at its Mobberley factory in the UK…
The Zone System is the most powerful tool you can carry in your head when you pick up a light meter. Not because Ansel Adams invented it, and not because it sounds impressively technical. But because…
I notice the article appears to be cut off — only the introduction and first section opening are included, with the rest replaced by a placeholder note. Could you share the complete article text?…
The date printed on the box isn't a death sentence. It's a manufacturer's promise: up to that date, under reasonable storage conditions, the film will perform according to its specs. After that…
On this blog we spend a lot of time on home development and DIY scanning. That's our usual territory. But honestly, the vast majority of people shooting film in 2026 are sending their rolls to an…
There's something slightly paradoxical about making a case for film photography as a mental health tool. We're talking about a medium that costs money, demands patience, requires physical space, and…
If you're looking for a brand-new enlarger in 2026, the market has shrunk considerably. Two manufacturers still offer new equipment aimed at serious amateurs and working pros: Kaiser Fototechnik…
Setting up a darkroom almost always starts with the same question: which enlarger to buy, and what's a reasonable price to pay? The used market is full of machines that spent twenty or thirty years…
Harman Technology has just launched its fourth color film stock. And not a conventional color film, let's be clear from the start: the Switch Azure 125 is a film where the colors are literally…
You spend hours picking an enlarger, checking the head, the baseboard flatness, the column rigidity. And then for the lens, you grab whatever was rattling around in a box, or pick up the cheapest one…
For a lot of photographers, printing in the darkroom feels out of reach without a basement or a spare room. Which is a shame, because the real obstacle isn't space — it's organization. With a bit of…
Since spring 2026, the film shelf has looked a little different in a lot of shops. New yellow boxes carrying names nobody had seen in decades: Ektacolor Pro, Ektapan, Kodacolor. Eastman Kodak is now…
Eastman Kodak made it official in May 2026: 100-foot bulk rolls of Ektapan 100, Ektapan 400, and Tri-X 400 in 35mm, available through direct distribution. It's one of the most significant film…
Large format has long been the territory of purists and contemplative landscape photographers working behind a wooden tripod. But something has shifted in recent years: affordable field cameras have…
With prices climbing the way they have been, a handful of color film stocks under $15 a roll deserve a serious look. Lucky C200 is the most recent and most talked-about example, but it's not alone…
There's a category of photographic chemistry that tends to split the analog community right down the middle: the monobath, a single solution that develops and fixes film simultaneously. One chemical…
Since its announcement in April 2026, the Kodak VERITA 200D 5206/7206 has been generating conversation well beyond editing suites and HBO productions. It's a motion picture film, designed for cinema…
The red dot on the cartridge is a nice touch. But at $10 US a roll for an ISO 50 film stock, the question deserves a straight answer: is the Leica Monopan 50 genuinely exceptional, or is it a decent…
The original Rollei 35 is about as close to a gold standard as compact cameras get. Back in 1966, Heinz Waaske pulled off something that shouldn't have been possible: a quality lens, a light meter…
There's something a bit odd about the way beginner film photography guides almost always point newcomers toward an SLR: a Pentax K1000, a Minolta X-700, sometimes a Nikon FM2. Those are solid…
You're already developing your 35mm rolls at home, you know your Rodinal from your D-76, and lately you've been eyeing medium format with a mix of curiosity and wariness. It's a step that gives a lot…
A 35mm SLR bought used isn't necessarily in bad shape, but it's rarely been well looked after in recent years. The light seals have hardened, the mirror has collected dust, the viewfinder has gone…
The Contax T2 fetches around $2,000 on eBay. The Olympus Mju II clears $400 without blinking. The Yashica T4, provided it's been photographed in the right influencer's hands, routinely hits $500 to…
There's something about standing in a dark room, watching an image slowly materialize in a tray of developer, that you simply can't explain to someone who hasn't been there. That's the moment when…
If you've been shooting film for any length of time, you've probably wrestled with this question at least once. Your camera has a built-in meter, there's a free app on your phone, and dedicated…
Everyone's been talking about the film revival for a few years now. What gets discussed less is the sticker shock when you actually start adding things up. Between 2020 and today, film prices have…
You've been developing your own black and white for a while now. The Paterson tank, Rodinal or HC-110, fixer, loading the reel in complete darkness — it's all become second nature. So the question…
Everyone's developing at home these days, but scanning is still where the workflow stalls. You pull a beautiful roll out of the tank, hang it to dry, and then it hits you: how do I actually digitize…
The idea is simple and genuinely appealing: instead of exposing a full 24 × 36 mm frame on your 35 mm film, a half-frame camera uses roughly half that area, around 17 × 24 mm (or 18 × 24 mm depending…
Under $100 for a new film camera doesn't set high expectations. Lightweight plastic body, plastic lens, one shutter speed, and a lot of compromise baked in. The Kodak Snapic A1, released late 2025 by…
For years, Lomography carved out a very specific niche: plastic bodies, a deliberate lo-fi aesthetic, intentionally imperfect results. The Lomo MC-A throws all of that out the window. It's a new 35mm…
There's something almost comic about the current secondhand 35mm SLR market. A Canon AE-1 Program in decent shape routinely sells for $150 to $250 body-only, sometimes more if the seller threw in a…
Back in June, Flic Film, a Canadian manufacturer and distributor of analog photography products, posted on social media about an "all-new film stock." The announcement set off a wave of questions…
In March 2026, Eastman Kodak announced six new professional film stocks across two families: Ektacolor Pro in color and Ektapan in black and white. The Ektapan line covers three speeds, 100, 400, and…
The developing tank is the heart of the home darkroom. Not the developer, not the fixer, not even the thermometer. The tank. It determines how chemistry contacts the film, how agitation works, and to…
Color filters get talked about in the analog world as if they're some kind of dark art. In practice, they're not mysterious at all. The principle is straightforward, the results are predictable, and…
The 35mm SLR market has shifted pretty dramatically over the past decade or so. Prices have tracked Instagram demand, not mechanical condition. A CLA'd Canon AE-1 at a reputable shop will run you…
Push processing seems like a simple question on the surface: how much longer do I develop? But behind that calculation sits a more consequential choice, which is the developer. Two rolls pushed two…
Concerts, poorly lit venues, streets at night — these situations all force the same compromises. You either shoot wide open at f/1.4 or f/2 and accept unpredictable focus, or you push your ISO. In…
The market for new film cameras is shifting, and not just on the film stock side. Over the past two or three years, companies with no photographic heritage have been launching brand-new 35mm…
Choosing a developer is where film photographers spend more time searching than actually understanding what's going on. Forums pile up contradictory opinions, datasheets read like stereo manuals, and…
There's a stubborn myth surrounding home film development: that it requires a proper darkroom, hazardous chemicals, and obsessive temperature control. In practice, developing a black-and-white film…
Most Leica enthusiasts already know Light Lens Lab for their replica lenses, particularly the EP-L series reproducing the look of the Summilux and the Canon 50mm f/1.1. Those lenses found a real…
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