Bill Smith's Photography

My Public Relations and Speechwriting instructor Dave Turnbull gave me some darkroom chemicals last spring after he cleaned out his darkroom. Amoungst the assorted chemicals was a quart kit of Diafine, fine grain film developer that pushes the film speed, in case of the Agfa APX 400 I shot yesterday the speed went to 500 ISO with no grain increase on average. I became a convert, I still love my HC110, Rodinal and D-76 but with another developer in the tool kit and that is low maitainence as long as you follow the instructions.

Until I land a full time Public Relations/Corporate Communications gig, I am doing a tiny bit of freelancing with a little boutique agency called Plum PR. I got the call from the Maggie, the owner, she had a fundraiser for client (The National Youth Orchestra) and needed a photographer fast. Maggie was cool with the fact I do this old school and was surprised at how fast I turned around the images (take that digital media). I printed two from the concert portion using Ilford RC 8x10 Pearl finish paper. I am very happy with these prints. I had a blast shooting the event.

I am suffering what from Gear Aquisition Syndrome or more commonly known in photography circles as GAS. I have a signifigant birthday next year, I am not telling you how old I will be because that is inmaterial. I want to build a killer kit as a birthday present to myself. Option 1) A Leica M body Rangefinder maybe an M2, M4 or M6 with Carl Zeiss 35 f2 Biogon, 50 f2 Planar and 90 f2 Leica Elmarit lens set. This won't be cheap but with this kit I won't be buying anymore Leica. Option 2) A Nikon FM3a, the last manual focus 35mm film SLR from Nikon. They purged their product line up a few years ago leaving only the outsourced FM10 and the pro body F6 and the FM3a was one of the casulties. I don't mind if it's the chrome or black finish and I plan to buy Nikkor AI/AIS glass to go with it. I am thinking the 20 f2.8, 28 f2.8, 35 f2, 50 f1.4, 105 f2.5 and a 200mm lens. That is a lot of glass but I am buying used and on the whole Nikkor glass is inexpensive compared to some oth...

This print blows my mind, the negative scan is below but this shows the water much better falling on the rocks. There is a little spot along the Bruce Trail near Waterdown On. called Smokey Hollow where I took this shot. I will warn you it is not an easy spot to get to and you have to be really careful with your footing. I got to explore long exposure photography and I realized my Sunpak tripod is at best so-so for these sort of things. I printed this on Ilford Pearl Finish RC 8x10 paper developed in Dektol.

I went back into the darkroom to make some prints, this one was taken two weeks ago before an information interview with my job search. I was using my Leica M3 with a 50 f2 Summicron lens with Adox (Efke) 100 film. I printed on Ilford Pearl finish Multigrade IV 8x10 paper with Dektol as my paper developer.