Bill Smith's Photography

I am so doomed with medium format, my only saving grace is not falling in love with the Hasselblad 500 CM 6x6 SLR system. I am devoted to Rolleiflex in terms of weight and ergonomics after trying out Alex's Mamiya C220F. It's a heavy twin lens reflex camera with interchangeable lenses which is nice if you need to switch between wide, prime and telephoto. Personally I find the Mamiya too heavy, I prefer hand old shooting over tripod work and Rollei just plain works for me. Now while I only have negative scans here, I did print from 6x6 negatives last night. It takes some getting used to in terms of exposure but the end results done right blow my mind. Thank you Alex for loaning me your Nikkor 80 f5.6 EL lens, it will be put to good use the next few months.

Kodak Tri-x 400 is one of those legacy black and white films that can be used for most photographic situations. What I like about it is you can push (deliberately underexpose) up to 3200 ISO and get a decent negative with stand development with Rodinal Developer . The images below were shot on a Nikon FE2 I re-sealed for my brother and I wanted to test it out. The roll of Tri-x was exposed at 3200 and processed in 1:100 Rodinal so if I was mixing up a 500ml solution it would have 5ml of Rodinal concentrate. I stand developed for two hours starting off with 30 seconds of gentle agitation and after that three gentle agitations every half hour. The solution temperature was at 20c, give or take a degree. The biggest mistake people do when using this combination is over agitating the tank full of developer or being too aggressive with the agitation. That will introduce a lot of grain which most times you don't want. This is my go to combination for doing event photography for my IABC ch...

I am spending a lot of time up near the Forks of the Credit this Summer on weekends working on a project for possible exhibit next year with two other photographers. We are focusing on the GTA Greenbelt a region around Greater Toronto though protected officially from development is under stress from gravel quarries and expanding suburbs. I am focusing on the fragile beauty of the Greenbelt and I am having fun putting the portfolio together. I will be spending the winter in the darkroom printing the 35mm black and white, over at my brother's for the 6x6 negatives and I have to find a decent colour lab who can handle the slides and c-41 negatives regardless of format.

My brother Alex is my worst enabler. I now want a Rolleiflex after trying out his Rolleicord recently on a hike near Belfountain. For those not familiar, Twin Lens Reflex cameras have been around for about 80 years and use 120 roll film. The Rolleicord is the prosumer TLR derived from it's "big brother" the Rolleiflex and differs a little on features and ergonomics. So why beat around the bush, get the rolleiflex and be done with it. As much as people merit the versatility of a Hasseldlad 500 series 6x6 SLR system, personally I rather have the TLR. You only get one choice of lens on the camera as it is built in, mechanically it's really simple and it does not weigh a ton. What I love about medium format photography is you have to slow down, plan your exposures a lot more than 35mm and be really fussy with your metering of the scene. I used Ilford Delta 400 black and white film processed in Xtol 1+1. Not my usual choice of film, it's all Henrys Oakville had in st...