Category: Articles
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Going home again… and leaving with the big sky (on Kodak Portra 400)
In 1940, a book by Thomas Wolfe titled You Can’t Go Home Again was published posthumously. The title has become a famous saying, the meaning of which indicates (to many), that while you can return to the place where you grew up, things will always have changed to the extent that they become unrecognizable, that…
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5 Frames… Of canals, locks, floodgates, sluices, and levees on ILFORD XP2 Super (35mm / EI 320 + Y48 Filter / Nikon F3 + MD-4 / 50mm 1.2 AI-s) – by Patrick Gillin
ILFORD XP2 Super often gets a bad rap, as did the C41 B&W offerings from Fuji and Kodak before they were canned. I started shooting it while home from university for holidays and summers, since I could get it inexpensively and easily processed near my parents’ house rather than bringing the exposed film back to…
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5 Frames… Of Kodak Plus-X Professional 125 / 120 / EI 50 / Ansco Speedex 4.5 Special + Agfa Solinar 85mm f/4.5) – by Rodolfo E. Ramírez
The 1950s saw the release of the Ansco Speedex 4.5 Special, a 6×6 folding camera made in Germany and sold by Ansco and Agfa under the names Speedex and Isolette. The camera lineup offered a range of models with diverse lens and shutter configurations to suit different budgets. As a piece of photographic equipment, the…
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5 Frames… In my room on ILFORD XP2 Super (35mm format / EI 400 / Leica M4 + Summicron 5cm f/2) – by Simón Ducos
I don’t remember when it started, but at some point in the last five years, I began using photography as a means to explore a place. I believe that with photography, one is always getting to know new areas, or at the very least getting new perspectives on old areas, but it isn’t always with…
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My RA-4 reversal journey: Shooting and processing colour paper negatives
I got bit by the RA-4 reversal bug a few weeks back, diving deep into chemistry, filtration, processing, and rinsing (more on the rinsing a bit later). The RA-4 development process is used to produce a color print on (you guessed it) color paper in the darkroom. In this article, I cover my RA-4 reversal…
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5 Frames… As an ode to unsung photography heroes (Fujifilm NEOPAN 100 ACROS / 35mm format / EI 100 / Nikon F + Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8)
No, this ode is not about the camera, lens and film mentioned in the headline and shown in the photo below. The praises of NEOPAN 100 ACROS film, the „F“ and the Micro-Nikkor have been proclaimed in countless other contributions on this site and on many others. This is more about a device that lends…
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What can you do if an idea seems “too big”?
I’ve been experiencing what I consider to be an issue in the current bodies of work I am working to produce. I spent most of summer 2022 photographing customs, celebrations, rituals, and practices mostly in the South of England. These are part of ongoing documentation with my collective, New Exit Group as we are working…
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5 Frames… On Agfa APX 100 with an Olympus OM-10 + Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 – by Thomas Garrard
I’m quite new to photography, I inherited my first camera in 2022 after the passing of my Grandfather — an Olympus OM-10. Previously I’d not really enjoyed photography and just took snapshots on my phone as mementos of places I’d been. However, in receiving his camera and slide collection, and seeing the care he’d taken…
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5 Frames… In Florence on expired ILFORD PAN F PLUS (35mm Format / EI 10 Contax RTS III + Carl Zeiss Distagon 2,8/28mm) – by Julian Ruoss
Heya, I’m Julian, and this will be – hopefully – my first contribution to 5 Frames, a series of articles that I enjoy a lot. It was in March or April this year (2022) when I found that roll of ILFORD PAN F PLUS while strolling through a flea market. One reason I bought it…
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How-to: Shoot Fujifilm Instax on a Polaroid BigShot
Released in 1971, the Polaroid Big Shot was a funky, green plastic camera built for one thing: portraits. The plastic behemoth is simply designed, using a fixed focus 200mm, single-element plastic meniscus lens. The grip has a stereoscopic rangefinder integrated in it, which makes framing and achieving focus easy. The focus point is fixed at…
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Review: Kodak Pocket Instamatic 10 + Lomography Tiger CN200 film
I recently picked up a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 10, it’s a 110-format film camera that produces tiny negatives. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with it. What made me fall in love with this pocket 110 camera was its uncommon visual appearance of it — it immediately attracted me. The second thing was the simplicity of…
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Making trichromes with Solarfast dye: A cheap and fast alternative to gum bichromate printing??
Last year, while browsing in my excellent local art supply store, I noticed the rack of Solarfast dyes from Jacquard. It was there with their cyanotype supplies and I was fascinated to learn that it is a photosensitive dye that acts like cyanotype sensitizer but is available in a wide variety of colors. Above: My…
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New film cameras from PENTAX / Ricoh Imaging? “Film Project Start”
Some great news to help round out the year! Pentax (now a division of Ricoh Imaging) is starting the development of new film cameras. Announced through a collection of videos, a mini-site and a press release today, the company states the project involves the “research and development of new PENTAX-brand film camera products” and is…
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5 Frames… At the Tatacoa Desert on Kodak Color Plus 200 and a Nikon FM2n (35mm Format / El 200 / Nikon Nikkor 28-105mm AF macro f/3.5-4.5D) – by Juan Roa
I wanted to visit Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert before traveling to the US, and asked my friend Susana if she would like to take a motorcycle trip there. She immediately said YES! We traveled from Cali, and our trip was around 16 hours (driving) and stayed in a wonderful place called Orion camp base, specialises in…
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Documenting Sport Is Your Gang (SIYG) and social outreach in Colombia
I have been documenting sports, specifically Muaythai, for over a decade. During this time, I have earned wonderful opportunities to document some of the best athletes from around the world, and watch high-level contests in the history of the sport. I have also had the privilege to witness this small sport expand globally to Europe,…
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5 Frames… Of Orwo UN54 in Florence on a Canon FTb (35mm Format / EI 160 / Canon FD 70-210mm f/4.0 zoom lens – by Sergio Palazzi
I discovered the existence of Orwo films during my short, full immersion trip in the changing Berlin of March 1990. Cheap as they were, I bought many BW rolls and used most of them (but some are still waiting in a drawer!). I forgot about Orwo for roughly 25 years, then I tried a reel…
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Film stock review: Santa Color 100
I’m one of those people who, if a new film stock comes to the market, I’ll be the first to try it out, and Santa Color 100 certainly caught my eye. A little background online info gave me some first-hand information to start with, and as soon as I saw these first few images of…
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6 Frames… Of Kodak Ektar 100 in Paris on a Canon A-1 (35mm Format / EI 100 / Multiple lenses) – by Nick Orloff
I’ve never really been an Ektar fan. It’s not that I dislike it, but in my personal hierarchy of colour negative films it seems there is always something I prefer… My first choice is usually Portra 800, typically shot at 200 or 400 — I love the way the colours saturate when it’s overexposed —…
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5 Frames… Of golden hour on a Balda Baldi 29 and Fomapan 100 Classic (120 format / EI 100 / Baldanar 80mm f/2.9 Triplet) – by Leon Blankenhorn
Where your comfort zone ends is where you discover something new and fun. Keeping that euphemism in mind, I decided against a slow and cozy morning one Sunday in this past August, and went to get my bike out of the shed instead. The lockdowns in recent history have blessed many of us with new…