May 2021

I bought an Air Ministry Dallmeyer Pentac 8 inch aerial reconnaisance lens about ten years ago from a flea market stall in London's Spitalfields antique market. At the time I was doing a lot of people shoots and had fancied the look of a Kodak Aero Ektar...but was put off by the radioactive thorium in the glass and the price! Eight inch Air Ministry Pentacs are the British Wartime equivalent of the American Aero Ektar and used to hang out the bottom of Spitfire wings on reconnaisance missions. There's quite a lot of information out there about Aero Ektars, but less about these lenses which perform...


Continue Reading »

I don't buy old photo paper. Like most of the old film cameras these days that are not already in the hands of collectors or users, most of it is trash--and increasingly expensive trash . We've all seen the e-bay posts where sellers open the paper pack and fan out the contents to take a photo for buyers. Understandably, for most, the basic knowledge of storing and handling light sensitive material has been lost to history. That didn't used to be the case. I used to buy every pack of old photo paper I saw. Sealed, open, part used, it didn't matter. Most of it worked fine, even for conventional...


Continue Reading »