Bill Smith's Photography

More scenes from the calm before the self isolation. The Minolta XD-11s are definitely coming with me up to Northern Muskoka later this year. Camera: Minolta XD-11, MD Rokkor lenses. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.

I sent my black Minolta XD-11 off to Garry's Camera back February for an overhaul, and in light of current events, it's the last camera that will be crossing the border for service for the forseeable future. My timing was just right because we're in the new normal now. My brother did his annual March ski vacation out west in Banff with the family from March 9 to the 14th  and I was back in Toronto looking after Maya, the family dog and Maverick, the family turtle. I packed my recently overhaulled XD-11 and some Rokkor glass for my stay and borrowed my brother's Texas Leica, the Mamiya GW690III, those negs will be processed and scanned shortly. The game plan was an audition of sorts for what gear will I take with me up to Northern Muskoka later this year for the annual photography retreat, the answer of course will be a pair of XD-11's. I'm super pleased with the results I got from my stay. I only shot one roll of colour (the roll of Ektar 100) and two rolls...

Funny what can happen in the space of three weeks, I thought I would be skiing to the end of March, well that plan got kiboshed pretty quick due to a global pandemic. Which is a shame because there was still a decent base at Caledon Ski Club and we could have made it to April, no problem. I've been skiing longer than taking photographs and doing the math, this was season 44 that was, and it ended with a whimper. At least I documented the last ski weekend, at least I can go back to this post and remember what perfect pair of days they were. Fast forward a week, I bolted up to grab the Smith clan's ski equipment out of the locker when the email came out the club was shutting down along with just about every ski hill in North America.  Skiing down the hill wasn't the problem, riding up the chairlift and having lunch and/or apres ski drinks in the lodge was. Pity, I figured there was three more weeks of skiing easy with the base we had. Welcome to the new normal kids. Cam...

March started off like a lamb to borrow the old cliche, and things took a stranger turn, more on that later. I had one beautiful weekend of skiing which you will see in the next post, I want to separate the content. What amazed me was how fast winter packed it in, more ways than one, what you see was shot three weeks ago. The snow now is pretty much gone on the fields and front yards. We might get the annual Easter snow storm, or not, tha'ts living in Southern Ontario for you. Now, Minolta X-700, I have growing respect for this camera, and it dusts the Canon AE-1P by virtue of using S76 batteries as opposed to the 4SR44 battery. The other thing, the X-700 doesn't disguise the fact it's a plastic shell camera, and that's ok, just don't drop it. From where I'm sitting this might be the ultimate travel SLR kit, because these cameras are cheap, in fact the two I own were gifted to me. The Minolta MD 28-85 zoom lens, is pretty much the ultimate travel glass, while...

This winter is an odd one, at least we got winter. From friends in Europe, they didn't get winter in spots, one friend in Belgium told the temperature in her town, Burges was +9c, meanwhile in Toronto it's -9c and didn't get any snow, she misses Canada and four definite seasons. By the time you see this posted it will be mid March, and it could either have 30cm of snow on the ground or be +12c and feel like early May. I treasured this ski season even though it was a real up and down with temperatures, skiing gets me through the winter and Caledon Ski Club is my happy place. Wandering around Caledon west of Highway 10 before and after skiing photographing the landscape gets me in to a calm frame of mind after a busy week. One thing, I love shooting with my Nikkormats, they are simple tanks of a camera, they came about because the Nikon F and later the F2 were the equivelent of the D850 and had a massive lens line up. A prosumer body helped the bottom line getting more peo...