The Fogdog Blog

About me

I am an amateur photographer, writer, wanderer and dreamer who found his way to the Northern California coast, quite unexpectedly, after living in the desert for three decades. I make my living in marketing and advertising.

I enjoy making photographs and tinkering around with old cameras. The more mechanical, the better.

I also like old cameras and using film because everything moves very fast in my world and using these old cameras slows me down. I enjoy that.

Current film cameras:

Nikon F and Nikon F2A, Nikon N8008s, Nikkormat EL, FTn, FT2 and FT3, Minolta SR-T 202 and X700, Contax N1, Pentax Spotmatic.

I shoot a lot of black and white because I like it. Sometimes I process it at home, sometimes I send it out to a lab in San Francisco. My favorite emulsions are Kodak TMax, Kodak Tri-X and Fuji Neopan Acros. When I shoot color, it's usually Kodak Ektar 100 or Portra. I'm liking Portra best these days and I hope Kodak keeps making it. Because I am impatient most of the time, much of my color is processed and scanned at my local mini-lab. When I have more patience, I use Richard Photo Lab.

My current digital camera is a Fujifilm X-T1.

My camera reviews are just my personal opinion. I've tried lots of different old cameras and perhaps something I write here can be beneficial to you. I try and get my facts right, but if you see something I have written that's incorrect, please let me know.

It's foggy a lot where I live. Sometimes, the fog breaks and the sun shines down through--that's called a Fogdog! It's warm on my face and it feels good.

About This Site.

I've been interested in photography since I was a teenager in the early 1970s. My Dad let me borrow his Kodak Retina rangefinder camera and both parents tolerated me setting up a darkroom in our basement, especially my Mom since it was her laundry room I filled up with equipment and smelly chemicals. I drifted away from photography for several decades, becoming interested again in the early 90s. I was living in Phoenix at that time and started shooting film with a Nikon N90s. I built my dream darkroom in my home there and was happily making photographs until a divorce derailed my hobby for another decade.

This site started out on WordPress as sort of a personal journal of my re-entry into film photography in 2010. Digital photography had almost totally replaced film photography by then, driving down the cost of old film gear drastically. With the divorce far enough behind me, I finally had a dollar or two to spend on photography again and I decided to try all of the old film cameras I had dreamed of owning and now could now finally afford.

I had issues with the WordPress platform and finally gave up there and moved over to Squarespace. This site continues to be the journal of my journey; buying, trying and sometimes selling old cameras.

Thank you for stopping by.