Having revealed a little of what it looks like behind the curtains in my recent post, So You Want Your Own Photography Blog, I talk about the challenges in setting up a website that can be used for any photographic discussion, from reviews of new or old equipment, sharing photographic…
When George Eastman released the first Kodak camera in 1888, it came preloaded with a long roll of photographic film that could take 100 images before it needed to be sent off for development. The idea that you could have a camera loaded with film that didn’t require separate glass…
Modern’s Top 47 Cameras from 1979 is the first of these lists I’ve published that originally appeared after I was born, so I’ve officially entered into an era in which I am older than the list itself! Much like the rapid changes in camera technology in the late 1950s when…
It’s been two years since the photography world lost one of it’s most important photographers. David Douglas Duncan, then 102 years old, passed away peacefully on July 7, 2018 with his wife by his side. Duncan was a life long photographer who later became good friends with Pablo Picasso, photographing…
For nearly 100 years, one of the most popular black and white film developers remains Kodak D-76. Using the properties of the Elon developing agent, also called Metol, Kodak D-76 is often seen as a universal developer that can be used with nearly every film, no matter how fast, how…
For most of the past century, the choice of whether you wanted to shoot photographs in color or black and white has simply been a matter of choosing one film or another, or in the digital era, pressing a button or two to switch back and forth. In the earliest…
You only need to be a camera collector for about five seconds before you discover one of the most frustrating aspects of the hobby. Is it the large number of extinct films that you can no longer get? Is it what do to with all of the “Ever-ready” cases that…
Whether you shoot film or digital, there are certain lenses that appeal to certain people. Some people like myself are more comfortable with wide angle lenses, some prefer portrait lenses like the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 or the Summicron 90mm f/2, and some prefer long telephoto lenses. For those who have…
I started out Keppler’s Vault 54 of Modern’s Top 47 cameras of 1969 by saying photographers love lists, and boy, was I right! That summary of some of the best cameras of the year turned out to be one of my best performing posts of the year, and while I’m…
It’s no secret that in the early 20th century, Zeiss was a name associated with some of the world’s best lenses. With the work done by Paul Rudolph and many other opticians, lenses like the Planar and Tessar in 1896 and 1902 respectively, became two of the most successful and…
It doesn’t take long to be a camera collector to have come across one of those oval gold foil PASSED stickers on many Japanese optical products. While it was common practice by many original owners of Japanese camera or lens owners to remove this sticker, many still remain in various…
My current digital camera is a Fujifilm X-T20 and when I am out shooting, I can change the simulated ISO setting as high as 12,800 in standard mode and 51,200 in “extended” mode meaning that no matter how slow of a lens I mount to it, I can shoot the…
