Recommended Reading 5/17/19

This week’s featured review is an in depth look at shooting Polaroid Originals (Impossible Project) SX-70 film.  This is a topic that’s very interesting to me as I have and have shot some of this film, and have been pretty underwhelmed to say the least.

Knowing the experimental nature of this film, and using a camera that I’m not even convinced is working properly, I’ve hesitated to give it a full review, but maybe I should.

Until I do, check out what David Hume from EMULSIVE has to say about the film and the experience of using it! Unlike other Polaroid Originals reviews out there, what I think separate’s David’s review apart from others is his credentials.  David is a professional photographer who not only shot the real thing when it was available, but he had his Polaroid prints sold in galleries!  His experiences with what Polaroid Originals is trying to reverse engineer gives him a unique perspective to compare the old with the new.

Here are more great posts from some of my favorite sites:

Keeping with a Polaroid theme this week, Alex Luyckx posts his thoughts on the Polaroid Impulse, a solid bodied, all plastic, fixed focus, point and shoot 600 series camera first released in 1981.  After reading this review, will you have an “impulse” to buy one yourself?  Only time will tell!

In an argument that likely won’t be answered any time soon and is older than Mac vs PC, iPhone vs Android, or Tastes Great vs Less Filling, Craig Sinclair at Casual Photophile makes a valiant effort to contrast photography as an art form (or not).  His thoughts are well thought out and well prepared, but mostly I just liked his photographs, and that’s really the most important part, or is it?

Once again, Jim Grey is updating some of his older reviews, but this time, its one of his all time favorites, the Yashica D TLR.  Like Jim, the Yashica D is also one of my all time favorite cameras, so it was with masturbatory excitement that I read Jim’s thoughts and looked at his sample pics!

I have a lot of respect for Johnny Martyr and this week’s list of Ten Commandments of Film Photography was a list I was about to memorize and change my life in order to follow.  But then I didn’t agree with all of them, now I think Johnny is the devil!  Just kidding of course!  Johnny’s list is spot on in a number of ways and offered a good bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, but there’s one I take particular issue with (cough-#2-cough), but that’s OK.  Johnny, I still love ya! 🙂



Alan Duncan is a noble guy.  His love for photography doesn’t start and end with Nikon Fs and Rolleiflexes, he shares his love with plastic fantastic cameras by Vivitar and other brands commonly found at Goodwill shops.  This week, he does a “Zoom Off” between two point and shoot zoom cameras from the 80s (or 90s…or 00s…I can’t honestly tell)!  In any case, his review is well written and thorough, and not surprisingly, he got some good shots from them!

Take everything I said about Alan above, and replace it with Peggy Marsh, and that’s how I feel about her take on the Pentax Pino 35.  Even more fascinating perhaps than the review itself, is the locale in which she shot this “throwaway” model.  Peggy is in Japan this week and perhaps her choice of a low value camera for such a long trip was a wise decision…or was it?

Man, I really need to start shooting slide film.  I’ve been well aware of Kodak Alaris’s new E100 film, but Hamish Gil’s look at Ektachrome E100 this week is excellent.  The images he got from this film have an almost digital look to them and one that I could only dream of getting, if I were a better photographer, that is.  Well, lucky for you, Hamish is a better photographer than me, and from the looks of it, uses better film than I do too!  The title of this post says “Part 1” which suggests there will be more coming!

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  We ALL hate Robocalls, but almost as annoying as the Robocalls themselves are the huge number of internet articles out there trying to tell you how to prevent them like this one from USA Today.

Listen to me….here is the one and only effective way at blocking them.  STOP ANSWERING THEM!  It might be fun to answer them and play stupid, or mess with a Robocaller, but all you’re doing is encouraging them to keep calling.  Each time you answer a telemarketer or any type of automated call, you are confirming to them that you’re a real person and this is an active line.  No amount of messing around with some poor sap from Scamistan is going to make a difference.  Just stop answering the phone, and if you have time, just block them.  You likely won’t see much of an effect right away.  You might even not see a difference in a couple of weeks, or months, but after a while, it will help.

One Comment

  1. Your recommendations something I look forward to, Mike.
    I never cared for integral Polaroid(SX70, Spectra, etc) film variants much- the often yellow cast was unappealing. I thought Kodak and Fuji (domestic only) did it better. We suffered through some truly abysmal stuff from Impossible, but were grateful they were trying.Now, though, I LIKE the newest stuff – better than the original. I just wish the image appeared faster

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