Many moons ago I was granted a few test rolls of the then-new Fujichrome Velvia 50. I happened to be in Las Vegas at the time, and curious just how saturated this touted high-saturation film might be I hiked around red rock country and exposed a few rolls. Having been a dedicated slide shooter and film tester for another photo mag I was pretty familiar with slide films and how...
Although the current Ekta-chrome Elite Chrome 100 and the E100 series films are the best emulsions Kodak has ever produced, some photographers had been hoping for an even more highly saturated chrome. Well, Kodak has responded with two films, intended for...
Ilford Photo recently confirmed reports that there are no plans to discontinue production of their XP2 SUPER film. The product is in free supply globally from Ilford Photo distributors and retailers.
Until recently, all of Kodak's professional color print films were marketed under the Portra logo, understandable because portrait and wedding photographers make up the primary market for such products. That changed earlier this year, when the company...
Dateline 1940: "The fastest film in the world is the new Tri-X, with twice the speed of Super-XX." If you want the numbers, the British Journal of Photography Almanac for 1940 (actually written in 1939) reckoned it was 7000 H&D.
Regular readers will note that my articles are usually about techniques, not test reports. But when there's a new film out there for portrait photographers, that's right up my alley. The majority of my work is portraiture and I've long...
It is interesting that as digital imaging began its ascendancy film reached an all-time high in quality: hue, saturation, and sharpness, all of which meant digital had to try harder to be better. One of the films that stood out were the Kodak Professional Portra color negative emulsions, which in the last 10 years have become a favorite for photographers worldwide.
Film photographers are a cantankerous and ungrateful crew, often greeting revised films with suspicion and resentment instead of hope and pleasure. To some extent this is understandable, because they usually have to establish new development times and possibly new exposure indices, too; but the manufacturers' claimed improvements are usually honest, and without them...
Leica just announced the M11 Monochrom, their latest black-and-white-only camera, and Shutterbug had a chance to use one for several days well ahead of the launch. Based on the Leica M11—which we labeled “The Ultimate M” in our review last year—the Leica M11 Monochrom delivers resolution up to 60.4 megapixel and image quality that’s beyond human imagination. The launch included the unveiling of the new Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 ASPH.
Don’t look now, but film is making a comeback! The reason why is that it’s still a great way to capture distinctive images that express your personal vision.
It’s been called “the longest running SLR in history” and that’s no exaggeration. Everyone who discovered photography at the same time I did – the early 1980s – either owned a Pentax K1000 or knew someone who owned a Pentax K1000.
Maco is not a name that is particularly familiar to most zphotographers--and those who do know the name are inclined to say "great products, shame about the documentation." Examples of the shortcomings of the latter are easy to find. For example, the same film-developer...