A Chorus of Choruses

By far my favorite guitar effect pedal is the chorus.  I love the lushness it adds to any guitar/amp combo, the swirling overtones, the chime…every pedalboard I’ve built has had one of these on it.  And my all time favorite chorus is the DOD FX-64 IceBox stereo chorus.  Not only is it a monster-sounding pedal,…

Agfa Agfaflex II: An SLR from the early days (1959!)

An SLR from the end of the 1950s. In great cosmetic and (mostly) working condition. $34.  Who could resist? During a visit to UsedPhotoPro last fall, I came upon an Agfa Agfaflex, a West German-built SLR with a non-interchangeable  50 f2.8 lens in working condition.  I’ve long respected old German cameras — I have several…

The minidisc that came in from the cold

I’ve had a fascination with the Sony Minidisc for more than 20 years.  I never understood why it never really took off here in the states — it represented the ideal way to digitally record your world.  Over the years, I’ve used mine to record live concerts, to jot guitar ideas, get clean audio for…

Trying Cinestill 800T with the lights of Christmas City

I’m a big fan of the folks at Cinestill.  Thanks to their chemical wizardry, I learned to process black & white film and develop all my recent color work with their Cs41 kit. So I decided to try one of their films, Cinestill 800T. 800T is a tungsten-balanced, high speed (800 ASA) color film.  It…

The time I found a roll in the dryer…

I usually check my pockets very carefully before doing the laundry — I hate it when a random post-it note or grocery receipt goes through the wash and leaves little bits all over the otherwise clean clothes. So it was with a bit of surprise during a recent wash day when I heard an unusual…

Two different directions for a dinosaur film

While looking through a box of memorabilia, I came across two rolls of unopened Kodak Elite Chrome II 400. Not exactly sure why I had it — it could have been leftover from when we retired our film cameras at work, or I could have purchased it hoping to do more slide work.  Looking at…

Voigtlander Vito CLR – a reunion many years in the making

When I was about 15, my Dad came home with a Voigtländer Vitessa found in my grandmother’s basement. In the 1950s and 60s, my grandfather handled European imports with an office out by Kennedy Airport.  While I have very few memories of Granpa Nick, I still remember the Grundig stereo console, the Olivetti Lettera typewriter,…

New Instax mini film meets 70-year old Rolfix

It’s a pretty common tale – while cleaning out my parents’ house several years ago, I came across a funky old camera from many years ago. It was a folding camera; once I figured out how to open it, I realized it was thing of beauty. But at that point, I wasn’t in much of…

Color processing becomes reality (for me, anyway…)

A few months ago, I took the plunge and tried processing film for the first time.  Like most photographers giving processing a shot, I started with black & white. Thanks to the folks at Cinestill Film and their Df96 Monobath, I had success straight off the mark.  Despite a few missteps with rolls 3 and…

Achieving a lifelong goal with Cinestill Df96

For as long as I’ve been taking photos, I’ve always been a astonished by what goes on behind the darkroom door.  For me, once I finished a roll of film, it was off to the processor and then waiting to get it back. It was always a goal of mine to learn how to process…