This week’s featured post covers a topic I struggle with almost daily! Should I shoot color or black and white? Sure, there are times when the choice is obvious. A cold day in the middle of winter is perfect for a high contrast black and white film, and a springtime walk through a flower garden requires a lush color film, but what about all those other times?
Andrew Morang from 35mmc attempts to answer that question with a variety of shots of the same subject in color and black and white and it’s interesting to read his take on each scene. I’m still not sure this article has a definitive answer (of course no article could do that), but it’s a fascinating read!
Here are more great posts from some of my favorite sites:
I’m not too fond of Kickstarter campaigns for their frequent “vaporware promises” but one that turned out well was Silberra film, launched by a Russian company back in 2017. Alex Luyckx gives us his thoughts, along with many awesome samples, of Silberra 100, a Panchromatic black and white emulsion. As always, Alex is very thorough, going as far as to compare how the film looks using different developers.
This post is titled the “Lada of the Camera World Or Not?” I used a similar comparison to the Zenit E in my review for that camera, but this isn’t a Cold War era automobile, rather a Cold War era Japanese point and shoot. The Halina 35X could possibly be the world’s first scamera. Something that looks to be far nicer than it really is. But how bad is it? Check out Alan Duncan’s review!
Hooray, another Yashica T-series review! I’ll give you a glimpse into the not to distant future as I’ll have one of my own here eventually, but until then, we can read Josh Solomon from Casual Photophile’s “Hype Free” review of the Yashica T4.
This is an interesting concept. A film review comparing two similar film stocks, but without revealing which is which. EM Met from EMULSIVE blindly compares Kodak Portra 400 and CineStill 800T (which is actually rebranded Kodak VISION3 500T 5219). EM suggests that the stocks are so similar and perhaps Kodak has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years with Portra, as it could possibly be a modified cinema film in disguise. Can you tell the the difference?
In this week’s edition of Japan Camera Hunter’s “Get Featured” series, we are introduced to Aruthur Sandford III who shares with us some stunning shots of Cuba using Kodak Vision 3 50D and 250D. Among his sample photos are some great throwback images of many classic American cars still running on Cuban roads, and when shot with Vision cinema film, gives a look that simply cannot be recreated any other way.
This must be cinema still film week as I have a third article mentioning it, but this time Kosmo Foto takes a look at a Stuttgart based company called Silbersalz who is offering a variety pack of unmodified Kodak cinema film in varying speeds. What separates Silbersalz from other companies offering cinema film, is that they include the cost of proper ECN2 development in the price. Supposedly doing it this way, compared to modifying the film to work in regular C41 chemicals offers more vivid colors.
I don’t just like old cameras for their history, I also have a fondness for old computers (they’re just less practical to collect), and this week Cult of Mac gives us the promise of a documentary about one of the most fascinating vintage computer stories ever, the Apple Lisa. Designed by Steve Jobs himself prior to the original Macintosh, the Lisa was a dismal failure and one that Jobs repeatedly tried to erase from history. Further adding to the mystique is the computer itself was named after Jobs’s first daughter, which he also famously tried to erase from history. Sadly, this documentary doesn’t yet exist, and this post merely serves as a Kickstarter promotion (which I already said once today I hate) to get the movie funded. I want to see this documentary, but boy do I hate crowdfunding!