The Winter of Our Discontent, or January on Kentmere 400

January 24, 2026

On how black and white film is beautiful

The other morning I’d pulled out a roll of Kentmere 400 with the intention of loading it in the Zorki and taking it for a walk. And then somewhere along the way that roll of film ended up in the Leica because loading the Zorki seemed like a pain (it is kind of annoying, like loading Barnack Leicas, but it’s also really not that bad). It might also be because I like the option to put the Zeiss or the Leica Elmar on the front of the M4-2 and not have to think about whether or not the Industar on the Zorki is going to pull off the images in the way I’m looking for it to without flaring like mad or introducing weird distortions, etc.. Either way, I ended up taking a walk with the Leica on a late sunny morning.

I shot the film at box speed but overexposed it by about a stop most of the time so it was kind of like shooting it at 200. I developed it at box speed in Ilfotec HC 1+31. I’d been waxing nostalgic about how beautiful black and white film is specifically when it comes to black and white work and the end results here kind of indicate that it’s not purely nostalgia or staring at my catalog of scans for too long. It does just look really nice. There’s a certain subtlety of tones in black and white film that’s really hard to get right on digital black and white for some reason. The sensor on the M262 can pull it off well enough especially when shooting a low contrast old lens like the Elmar 50/2.8. But on a lot of digital cameras it seems to take a lot of finagling to massage the tones to get anywhere close to as beautiful and nuanced as film.

I think it’s also telling that I have 10 rolls of color film in my fridge and when I grabbed some film to shoot a film camera again I grabbed the black and white film… I think it says more about my trepidation about getting everything set up for the C41 development, if I’m honest. I’ll get there eventually, I think… But for now it was nice to shoot some black and white and remember the beauty of good old black and white film.

Zorkis, walks, bulk loading film, and other assorted nonsense

January 14, 2026

Wherein rambling takes place about shooting old cameras, bulk loading film, etc etc..

This morning I got an early start taking Ruckus for a walk around the neighborhood. I grabbed my camera before I walked out the door but he is such a handful to take for a walk because he needs constant work on reactivity training that I didn’t take a single photograph on our walk. In retrospect I don’t know why I actually thought I’d be able to. But it was a beautiful morning, so when we got back home I decided to head back out the door with the ol’ Canon 5D and see what the world had to offer. It was a nice walk, the kind of walk I usually engage in. I throw a camera around my neck, head out the door and wander around somewhat aimlessly, allowing the world to show me what’s worth paying attention to. Photography is ultimately just an art of paying attention, after all. There’s technical stuff involved in there but all the technical prowess amounts to nothing if you’re not paying attention.

On another note, I’ve really been wanting to get back to shooting some film, specifically some black and white film but I’ve been putting off loading up the bulk loader and rolling film. So today I finally stopped procrastinating and pulled the 100ft roll of Kentmere 400 out of the fridge and grabbed the changing bag and got the whole ensemble set up and loaded a handful of 36 shot rolls so I’d have them to grab and load in to the camera. If you like to shoot film and aren’t bulk loading film you’re throwing away money, honestly. A 100ft roll of Kentmere is around 100 bucks, and with 18 rolls out of 100ft it’s about $6 per roll. To be fair the number of film stocks available in 100ft rolls for a decent price is dwindling but as a general rule if you can get the 100ft roll for a decent price you can save a decent amount per roll over buying individual rolls of film.

I’ve also been wanting to shoot my old Zorki 1 some more because I seem to get in to phases where I romanticize the shooting experience of that camera and have the urge to shoot it until I put a few rolls through it and realize it’s not a magical tool. I wrote a whole piece about this several years ago on here but apparently I don’t learn my lesson. I’m forever looking for the magic of shooting my old Leica III apparently. And even though I know it’s not magic, there is something really fun about that stripped down shooting experience on those super early rangefinders. It’s everything you need to make a picture in a tool and absolutely nothing you don’t. I want to run some color film through it too since I need to start working through the color film in the fridge and tackle the task of finally developing the color film. Send positive vibes… Anyways, that about sums it up for this post. A nice day of walking and making photographs, bulk rolling film, and talking about old Soviet cameras.

C41 and some photos from last year you never saw

January 09, 2026

Thoughts on Color Film and Pics from before Christmas

Well, here we are over a week in to 2026 already. However the hell that happened. I recently got an order from B&H with a Cinestill C41 development kit and 10 rolls of Kodak color film (5 rolls of Gold 200 and 5 of Ultramax 400). Apparently in 2026 I’ve decided to undertake the masochistic act of home developing color film. Maybe it won’t be that bad, I’ve watched enough YouTube videos about how to do it and it honestly doesn’t seem like it’s that bad. I am, however, ambivalent about my feelings toward color film. I’ve shot it in the past and my general feeling has been that it’s more work than necessary when modern digital sensors can do color so well, and not only do they do color really well for less work but you have so much more control over the color processing than you do with the baked-in look of any given film stock.

But truth be told, I like shooting film cameras more than digital cameras. I like the simplicity of the tools and the restrictions of the medium. Something about simplicity and scarcity focusing your practice, I guess. And for black and white I’m not entirely convinced that film isn’t still a superior medium in terms of its capacity to render the world in monochrome in a uniquely beautiful way. Or maybe I’ve just been looking at my catalog of film scans and waxing nostalgic for too long… But, given how much I shoot color these days the idea of using a film camera and being able to make images in color was pretty appealing to me, so here we are.

The pictures you’re seeing here are out of the venerable old Canon 5D Mk1, and my goodness does it output some beautiful colors. It’s kind of “filmic” without all the hassle of home developing your own C41. It’s probably also a hell of a lot sharper than 35mm film scans. But, uh, we should still shoot the film because, reasons… Magic of the process… Also it’s all already in the fridge and the chemicals are under the sink so I gotta put ‘em to use, you know?

What else is there to say? Oh yeah, I’ve been reading through Stephen Shores Modern Instances. I decided to pick it up after reading his earlier book, The Nature of Photographs. It’s a cool book, and Stephen Shore is the beautiful combination of a careful and insightful thinker as well as a good writer. It’s a potent combination so I’ve been enjoying working my way through that book as he skips around from reflection to reflection. It’s a little haphazard but I think it’s more enjoyable that way. Check both of those books out if you get a chance.

But anyways, that about sums it up. Just some updates on where I’ve been and where I’m going. We’ll see how this little venture goes when I inevitably end up posting the results here. Will it be awesome? Mediocre? Idk.