Bill Smith's Photography

I blame my brother Alex Smith for all this, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. He is a big fan of the Rollei 35 and owns a few of them. He travels a lot for work so one along with maybe two rolls of film goes into his briefcase and it is the perfect travel rig. The Rollei 35 when it was introduced back in 1966 was the smallest 35mm camer in production at the time. It came with a 40mm F3.5 Zeiss Tessar lens and it garnered a lot of love from photographers around the world including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Production moved to Singapore in the early 1970s and the 35S with a 40 f2.8 Sonnar lens was also introduced. I traded in my Olympus OM-4 two weeks ago for a Rollei 35S, you read more about that another time. This camera is small as in it fits into your jacket pocket small and you forget about it. Small enough it fits into one hand only.  My brother swears by this camera when skiing and I plan to take mine up this winter too. There are some quirks, the film a

My last day in the Beaches coincided with my birthday, traveling back to Oakville via streetcar, GO Train and Oakville transit is a bit of a trek, and this time out I felt rather bittersweet about it. I really feel like this neighbourhood is my second home. Who knows in the long haul. Wandering around on my birthday I just wanted to soak up every sensory input of the neighbourhood,  and I shot with my last roll of Portra 160 in my stash, yes I exposed it properly this time out. I really love the FE2 for colour photography, especially C-41, this past stay the FM2n wound up being the black and white rig. That's leaving me wondering if I should take that instead of an F2a, I'm leaning towards the FM2n because it's lighter. We'll see, I have two weeks to figure it out. Meanwhile, I'll be back in the Beaches at some point..... Camera: Nikon FE2, Nikkor lenses. Film: Kodak Portra 160

Damn this film is good, especially with portraits, for example my friend Trevor near the bottom, he's giddy as he became the proud owner of a Nikon F5 that has been through the hands of a few members of the Classic Camera Revival podcast team over the years. Forget cartridges, I'm buying some bulk rolls of this film. Camera: Nikon FM2n, Nikkor Ai 50 f2 lens. Film: Ultrafine Extreme 400, HC110 B.

Kosmo Mono 100 or Fomapan 100, just plain rocks in Rodinal. Damn this my favourite combination of film and developer for 100 ISO black and white films of late. I should try UN 54 and Cinestill D96 Powdered developer, maybe with my upcoming photography retreat in Northern Muskoka in a few weeks, if the weather plays ball, I will. I got stupid luck with my stay at my brother's place in the Beaches this past August. The skies were perfect. When I shot this I had fluffy clouds and that just made things even more beautiful, working on this blog post I was wondering what musical theme should go with it, and Pat Matheny's To the End of the World came to mind. I want to go back to late August, that was this past Summer's sweet spot. Camera: Nikon FM2n, Nikkor lenses. Film: Kosmo Mono 100, Rodinal 1+50.