Bill Smith's Photography

Want some piece and quiet in the suburbs? I discovered patches of wilderness in my own backyard. I have been taking pictures this Summer close to home and getting to the shoot sites by bicycle. You learn to pack your camera gear carefully as the weight can add up quickly. I want to print this image at some point.

Three family shots, I really like the one of Alex feeding his daughter (my niece) Charlotte. Marcus is always a ham for the camera, I am almost a little frightened at how fast he is maturing. I used a Nikon F with Tn meter head and a Nikkor S 50 f1.4 lens with Classicpan 400 film. Glorious grain you can tee off with.

It's the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. The Durst M300 has been taken off front line duty in my darkroom and replaced by the Bentley Continental of enlargers: the De Vere 504. It's an early birthday present from my mom and my brother brokered the deal through a lab getting rid of some surplus gear. Turns out my 504 has a Varicon Codenser head which requires big Rodenstock lenses which is a rare beast, most De Vere 504's came with a colour head. Printing with the De Vere is a different experience, I find the prints to be sharper and much more pleasing with the condenser head. I love my "new" thirty year old enlarger. The print below is the first one and I used Ilford 5x7 Multigrade Glossy paper and it beats the negative scan in a previous post.

To correct any misconceptions that I only shoot exclusively black and white, once and a while I throw in a roll of slide film to shake things up. For some reason Kodachrome is hard to come by in my parts so I tried Fuji Provia 100f instead. It is a nice E-6 emulsion which means it can get processed locally much faster. I used my Minolta XE-7 and I found the Rokkor lenses really nice to shoot with in colour. There will be more to come. I also plan to throw up an article on how to buy a classic camera shortly too once I have proof read it. Cheers!

It's been quiet on this blog but I have been very busy with Picture the Cure and my job hunt and spending time out on my bike. Here are some shots from Bronte taken with OM-1 with some Foma 100 film taken on Canada Day and the following weekend.