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Dmitri

What You Get With Your GOLD Membership

Thank you for joining the Analog.Cafe GOLD membership program! You are supporting a small, ad-free, privacy-friendly independent publisher. This handbook summarizes all the things you get in return for your patronage.

Members’ Handbook

As Long as You Have the Right Kind of Money

Film is a vital consumable for the analogue photography ecosystem. Whenever it becomes more expensive or less available, the community feels the impact. Lucky for us, the past twelve months brought us favourable pricing after years of steady increases. In this article, I will break down the latest findings from the annual retailer survey, discuss how costs may differ depending on where you live, and explore some of the best film stocks to buy today.

Colour Film Prices Are at Their Lowest Since 2022!

With Honeycomb Titanium Shutter

This camera’s 100% mechanically powered titanium honeycomb shutter curtains can reliably sync with flash speeds up to 1/250s and fire at a bullet speed¹ of 1/4,000s when needed. The FM2 is one of Nikon’s longest-living SLRs: it remained in production for 19 years! This review dives deep into this camera’s pedigree and features.

Nikon FM2/FM2n Film Camera Review

Samples, Recipe, Discussion, and Development Times

This article is a follow-up to yesterday’s experiment with pulling HP5+ to ISO 3; whereas the former was fairly easy to do, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you try what I’m about to share with you here. Still, this resource comes with all the techniques and recipes necessary to replicate the experiment, as well as suggested times for developing HP5+ at EI 12800, 25600, and 51200.

Pushing Ilford HP5+ to ISO 100,000

Ilford HP5+ is a ninety-year-old¹ black-and-white film known for its versatility, sharpness, and controlled response to various development methods. Many photographers love to push-process it and occasionally pull-process. Yet, to my knowledge, no one has pull-processed it to this extreme; thus, this may be the first time anyone has ever shared the technique and the results with the HP5+ shot as if it’s an ISO 3 film.

Pulling Ilford HP5+ to ISO 3

Book Review

The Tsushima Cyanotypes is a black-and-blue photobook of cyanotypes by KC Ahonen, limited to just 200 copies. I loved flipping the 76 pages of this A5-sized uncoated book and seeing the 30 masterfully printed blue-on-white cyanotype prints. Yet, the most impactful piece of this book was the artist’s statement, where KC revealed the source of his images and its uncanny connection to our modern lives within the parallel universe from ones and zeros.

The Tsushima Cyanotypes

Wisky (Wikimedia Commons)

23 Ranked Tools and Techniques for All Skills and Budgets

Photographs that show great detail, even when examined up close, can enhance the viewing experience. Images shot on film with vintage cameras can produce enormous amounts of sharpness and resolution — but that’s not necessarily the default, even if you’re wielding a premium point-and-shoot. These 23 tools and techniques summarize some of the most effective ways to improve sharpness and resolution in your film photography. They’re ranked based on their potential and include practical advice with appropriate references.

How to Make Sharper Photos on Film

A Simple Way to Fix Inacurate Meters

Nikon F2 Photomic metered prisms are beautiful and sturdy like the rest of the camera but are prone to issues. Perhaps the most common fault on the nearly indestructible Nikon F2 cameras is a malfunctioning metered prism. I’ve seen many copies sold with the readings off by a few stops. In this short guide, I’ll explain what may be causing this problem and how to fix this issue at home.

How to Service the Nikon F2 Photomic Metered Prisms

Web App 📱

Improve image quality and avoid mistakes when developing film at home. Chem Log keeps a record of all the mixing dates for your chemicals. This will help you avoid using expired chemicals. Chem Log keeps a record of films that were processed in each of your chemicals. This will help you avoid or compensate for exhausted chemicals.

Chem Log

High-Contrast and Orthochromaticism (With and Without a Green Filter)

Film Ferrania’s Orto 50 is a newly reissued (2023)¹ orthochromatic black-and-white film by the famous Italian film factory. It features fine grain, high contrast, and blue light sensitivity (which makes it blind to the red colours). Orto 50 shares its fine grain, strong contrast, and some development times with Film Ferrania’s first product, P30 — but it’s not the same film.

Film Ferrania Orto 50 Film Review

Daren

Bring the Best Out of Your Film

This course will teach you the nuances of colour balance and a few simple methods for applying colour corrections. You will learn how to get the best colours and detail out of your film scans and how to draw viewer’s attention to your photos through editing without going too far.

How to Edit Film Scans

Zero Compromise for Purpose and Price

Nikon FE is an SLR with a delicate balance of features to accommodate portability, practicality, build quality, speed, and price. It is also built with exceptional attention to detail.

Nikon FE Film Camera Review

No Screens, No Distractions: Just You and the Nature

Learn to pick the most appropriate film cameras, lenses, and accessories for photographing northern lights, select the best films for the job, understand your exposure settings, and how to apply appropriate development and scanning techniques for the cleanest results on film.

Shooting Northern Lights on Film

Also, What Is Remjet?

Kodak is the world’s leading producer of colour-negative film, but not all of it is meant for still cameras. In this guide, we’ll examine Kodak’s cinema film options, what makes them unique, how to use them in still cameras (your regular rangefinder/TLR/SLR), and how to develop them at home or in a lab.

How to Remove Remjet & Develop Cinema Film in C-41

Yvonne Hanson

Zung Hoang

Made From Just the Official LEGO Components, It Takes Real Photos on Film

This August, I had the chance to interview Zung Hoang , the inventor of the first fully functioning (yet to be official) LEGO film camera over chat. A few weeks later, I met with the man to learn more about the project, see the camera stripped down, and borrow it for an entire month. This is the story of LEGO ZH-1, a fully functional film camera and its creator.

Hands-on With ZH1, a WORKING LEGO Film Camera

Bulk loading film saves money, frees you up to use any (reasonable) film length in a canister, helps upcycle 35mm canisters, and even simplifies home film development. With the right tools, you can roll your own cinema film or stage photography experiments that wouldn’t be possible with store-bought film rolls.

How to Bulk Load 35mm Film

As an Absolute Beginner

It’s easy to develop black-and-white film at home. The choice of chemicals, timings, and formulations may seem daunting at first, but once you understand how it works, you’ll find it to be a simple, forgiving process with lots of opportunities to excel and advance the quality of your images.

How to Develop Black-and-White Film at Home

Macro Photos for Less

Extension tubes are simple mechanical devices that let you to focus your regular or macro lens closer to your point of interest. This can help you fill more of your frame with your tiny subject. However, there are some limitations and a few formulas that you should be aware of.

How to Use Extension Tubes on Film Cameras

Fujifilm

Discontinued but Not Forgotten

Fujifilm Fujicolor Pro 400H is a pro-grade colour negative film with excellent dynamic range and unique colour reproduction thanks to its fourth colour layer. In this review, I’ll cover my experience with this film in 35mm and medium format, share a few samples, and discuss its technical properties.

Fujifilm Fujicolor PRO 400H Film Review

Affordable, Fun, Beginner-Friendly Vintage SLR With a Cult Following

Minolta X-700 is one of the easiest and most fun film SLRs ever built. This vintage camera can suit almost anyone, and the expansive Rokkor lens selection is considered by many to be the best quality per dollar spent. But no gadget is perfect. In this review, I’ll cover my extensive experience with the camera on the road and in my mini-studio, its strengths and quirks.