It began in the Earth year 2020, with the founding of the last of the Babylon films, located deep in neutral space. It was a port of call for refugees, smugglers, businessmen, diplomats... and travelers from a hundred worlds. Could be a dangerous place – but we accepted the risk, because Babylon 13 was our last, best hope for peace. Read more.

Kodak makes a great film called Ektar. Known for its bright, saturated colors, it's labeled at ISO 100 and is a great film to use for landscapes and vacations and pretty much anything. However, it is is not the only Kodak Ektar film out there. Search for expired film, and you may come across old Ektar at ISOs of 25, 125, and 1000. What's the deal with those? Read more.

The Advanced Photo System ("APS"), aka Kodak Advantix, had a brief, dumb existence. Claiming to be an upgrade to 35mm film, APS was actually the opposite, making the entire format dead on delivery. Flawed as APS was, it was also launched in 1996, simultaneous to the first digital cameras. Even though digital photo sharing was nascent, digital photography grabbed people's attention in precisely the way that APS did not. APS is dead, but it has had one lingering stain that nobody has been able to wash away: the digital sensor size "APS-C". Let's look into the details. Read more.

In summer 2019, Lomography introduced a completely new film stock. Into their existing lineup of traditional (i.e. Color Tiger) and non-traditional (i.e. LomoChrome Purple) films, they were adding a new beast: LomoChrome Metropolis XR 100-400. With muted tones and a cool color balance, they pushed it for urban street photos. Instead I used it to shoot my normal junk. Read more.

When I got the Hasselblad 500C/M, the previous owner showed me how to use the camera. One of the pieces of advice was to not be too aggressive spinning the film loading crank. Last week I decided to ignore that advice. Read more.

Like a zombie, Kodak's Ektachrome film has risen from the grave. Its re-animated version is called E100, and it is a daylight-balanced neutral-toned slide film only available in 135 (35mm) format. Yes, this is the most boring version of Ektachrome, but hey there's new film stock! Read more.

Back in May I purchased eight rolls of different black and white 120 roll film for a comparison (six Ilford stocks, two Kodak). The rolls included some I was familiar with, and some I had never shot before, with the intention that through shooting all films of similar subjects and in the same style, I'd be able to determine which B&W film best matches my style, or if I could even tell them apart at all. Read more.

I picked up off eBay some unusual film stock: Kodak Lumiere. Wildly out of date, and with only two rolls, see how the images came out. Read more.

One of those things that's been tickling my noggin for a good measure of time now is, exactly how noticeable is the difference between all those black and white films? Read more.

Lomography sometimes sells batches of their own, unique "LomoChrome Purple XR 100-400" film. How this film works and where it is made are mysteries – we can only know through guesswork, since Lomography themselves say very little about the film. So I guess I might as well just try it out, see what happens. Read more.

One of the weirder films you can find on eBay is Kodak's Ektachrome "Slide Duplicating Film 5071". There's not 5,070 other Ektachrome slide duplicating films, so "5071" is probably one of those cool index codes from back before computers made the codes 64 digits long. But most importantly, this "ESD" film isn't labeled with a film speed. So let's find out what it is! Read more.

A few years ago, a friend's father gave me a box of assorted camera junk that had been gathering dust in his garage for who knows how long. Included were some rolls of trash film. I threw them into my freezer and said "one day I'll shoot those". Little did I know, for one of the rolls, someone already had. Read more.

So you've got one of these old cameras from the days of yore, and you've figured out how to get the film in it and where to point the dang thing, but uh-oh, how do you know what numbers to set for the aperture and shutter speed? Read more.

These prices are as of 11/19/2014. They are all taken from actual receipts. This point of this exercise is to challenge the statement (that certain internet pundits make) that shooting film is cheaper than buying a digital camera every few years. Having done a lot of both of those things, I don't believe it to be the case, but I want some evidence to back this belief up. Read more.