The Online Photographer or TOP is a blog by longtime photography enthusiast and photo magazine editor Mike Johnston. Much of it is reviews or opining about modern equipment, but every so often turns an eye to film.
Mike opines about the beautiful machine, the enlarger, a mechanical device that suits him just fine.
Here is an article on John Coffer, a practitioner of tin type photography. Each photo is made on a sheet of burnished metal that had photo-sensitive silver applied to it by hand.
Petapixel is a blog every photographer should read. Recently, it seems that they also take film photography seriously. If one is not interested in non-silver process photography, it might be a slog to read as authors gush over the latest gizmos, which probably just empty your pocketbook.
Here is a wrapup of silver process related postings to Petapixel related to film in some way. Some might be related to older, film era hardware...
On that note, Yannick Khong complains about modern lenses, and how older designs can be much more realistic than modern lenses. He presents an analysis based on three properties of a lens, and how older lenses balance these properties to achieve a realistic look.
Meanwhile, Michael Zhang finds the Minolta Rokkor 45mm f/2 lens to be rockin' sharp. This lens is inexpensive, and Rokkor MD lenses can be found by the dozen on eBay. A Minolta MD body or two can be found there, too, for not much more. Beware that MC, MD and Minolta AF mounts are all different. In particular, the MC and MD mounts are mechanical mounts, and not compatible with AF without an adapter. Such adapters require a glass element to allow full focus range, lowering the image quality. There are adapters for AF mount that do not have glass, but they are intended for macro work only. The older bodies have the advantage that they are usually all mechanical, so no electronics to fail.
Lukasz Palka has a guid to mastering manual focus. By using the focus range system, sharp focus can be achieved instantly with a little planning. Essential to street photography, where events happening quickly have to caught in the moment.
Tavis Leaf Glover writes on mastering composition to get more keepers. Something anyone in the world of art needs to know. In that same vein, Lukasz Palka has another article on the decisions that go into making a photopraph. Lukasz writes that selecting the right gear for the assignment, using the right settings and techniques, and finally selecting the photos for your portfolio are all essential decisions that must be contemplated and executed for best results.
Jack Lindeberg has a short article on how to tell the relative age of film rolls. By giving the film a quick sniff, he claims that one can tell how long since the roll was exposed.
Meanwhile, Brendan Cherry tells of his novel use of a film camera to propose to his fiance. Brendan is a cinematographer who likes to shoot 35mm film.
