About Beyond the Aperture
Beyond the Aperture is a resource for film photography: reviews, education, information and occasionally, news.
For the most part, we focus on long-form content, and we pride ourselves in particular on our reviews. We want to tell the full story from our point of view, while being as objective as possible. Our reviews typically take several months to research and write, and we frequently update them as our experience with the cameras, films, lenses, and accessories accumulates. We don’t believe that it’s possible to write a comprehensive review of anything after playing with something for just a week or two. As a result, we take our time — and spare very little about the experience,
The story is much the same with other content here. As our experiences change or broaden, we revisit what we wrote to make sure it’s an accurate reflection of what we find. Photography is a journey, and the learning never stops.
We hope you find the articles here to be insightful and useful.
About Wes
I’m Wesley King, the head of Beyond the Aperture. While the reviews and content you find here would not be possible without the input and assistance of others, I’m the human behind the keyboard of all of the articles and reviews posted here — and the lens through which the experiences are documented.
I’m a multi-format photographer who’s been picture-taking for decades. I am primarily a film photographer, but recently (late 2023) I added digital back to my repertoire in the form of a Nikon D850, to leverage the same lenses I love and use with my Nikon F4S and F5 film cameras. Neither analog nor digital photography is “better” or “worse” than the other; each has their place, and I choose based on the results I want, what’s handy, and/or what I’m feeling in the moment. I use a lot of different cameras, but I favor my Linhof Master Technika and Hasselblad 503CW, plus the aforementioned Nikon F4S/F5 and Nikon D850.
Beyond these, I have well over 200 film cameras in my collection — the majority of which have been serviced either by me, or by a professional, and all but a scant few are in working condition. Ranging in age from a bit over 20 to nearly 110 years old, they include small, medium and large format, and use 135, 127, 120/620 roll and 4×5 sheet films.
I do all of my own film processing at home: black and white, C-41 color negative, ECN-2 color negative, and E-6 color positive. I scan the results for use in the usual contemporary ways, and occasionally use an enlarger to make prints, what many people now call “silver gelatin” prints to distinguish them from inkjet “photo paper” prints.
My photographic journey is still evolving, as is my personal style and preferred subject matter. I tend to like taking pictures from unique perspectives, capturing views that most of us don’t see (like macro or close-up images), or that we take for granted (like low angle shots). I aspire to many other forms: street photography, portraiture, night photography.
About Comments and Feedback
Broadly, this web site represents our own experiences and perspectives, and we do not allow comments, as the site was not designed to be a forum for public dialog or debate. If you feel we got something wrong, or otherwise take issue with something, please contact us. We work to promptly correct factual errors where we can confirm that we’ve made one, and we work to balance perspectives in other cases where that’s appropriate.
About Privacy and Data
We do not have a formal privacy policy here, primarily because:
- We do not engage in commercial transactions here;
- We don’t allow comments or other interactions in the site itself;
- We have no web advertising engines installed or running; and,
- We have no interest in knowing who you, individually, are.
Like virtually everyone else who operates a web site, however, we are interested in:
- Knowing how many people use this web site;
- Knowing which articles, pages or content are popular; and,
- Knowing how users are finding the site (e.g., a web search).
That allows us to understand how we’re doing, what works and what doesn’t, so we can make this site better and more interesting. To do that, we use:
- A product called Jetpack from Automattic, the people who make WordPress, which is the web site engine (platform) that we use here; and,
- Google Analytics, a popular web site tool that tells us how many people came here, and which articles, pages or content were accessed, over time. We also can see approximately where, geographically, visitors are coming from (which countries).
These tools, as well as the web site itself, utilize cookies in order to function properly. You can do a web search for Jetpack or Google Analytics to learn about how they work if you’re concerned about that. Note that for Jetpack, we use so few of its features, anything you find about it is likely to talk about things that don’t apply to this site. Our interest in the data that either tool is generating is limited solely to what we outlined above. Neither tool produces anything accessible to us that contains any details of your personal identity.
IMPORTANT: If you choose to use social features here (e.g., sharing a page on Facebook), then any privacy issues that may introduce would be governed by the respective social media platform.
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We use WordPress by Automattic for this site, and the beautiful theme was created by Alx Media. All content on this web site, both written and visual, with the exception of scanned brochures, manuals and the like, is Copyright © 2023 MWI, all rights reserved. No content from this web site may be reproduced in any form without our express, written permission. “Beyond the Aperture” and the BTA logo are trademarks of MWI.