Bill Smith's Photography

  I haven't really wandered through the downtown core since 2019, yes I did a visit to Downtown Camera August last year. On a hot sunny day, I wandered the core from St. Lawerence Market to King West with my friend John Meadows, the film of choice was Kodak Ektar 100 because I needed to shake things up a bit. Usually you do urban photography in black and white, I wanted to get my Saul Leiter and Fred Herzog on.  Camera: Nikon FE, Nikkor lenses.  Film: Kodak Ektar 100. 

 I confess, I don't shoot a lot of slide film, Kodak Ektar 100 is pretty reasonable and I can get the Kodachrome look without having to hijack a TARDIS and go back to 1972. Slide film is expensive to buy, Kodak E100 is about $28 per roll while Fuji Provia 100 is roughly $8 cheaper if you can find it, most stores are out of stock on that. I had one roll of each and went up to Elora with my Canon New F-1AE. The weather forcast was for a sunny day, well that was the forcast reality was we got a ton of high altitude haze from the forest fires in Northern Ontario.  Shooting slide film is a different beast, pretty much like you are shooting digitally as you are metering for the highlights as not to blow them out. Didn't have that problem today, that said waiting for the slides to come back from processing by Dave Nardi at E6it was worth the wait. My Canon New F-1's are coming north with me this year, if the trip up to Billie Bear is a go.  There is a difference between E100 and...

  I am a collector, and I collect Nikon film cameras specifically mechanical cameras from the very late 1950s to about the mid 1990s. Now I always wanted a black Nikon F Photomic FTN. Well, you know the saying, black cameras with a bit of patina take better photos, that and I already own the chrome, so of course I need the F Photomic FTN in black. Meet Dennis Hopper, formerly known as Wounded Warrior, my friend and Classic Camera Revial co-host John Meadows was the former custodian of the camera.  There are tons of blog posts on the Nikon F, truth of the matter the camera is a classic. Dennis was built in 1970 over ten years in the production and was recently overhauled. These cameas if properly looked after can be used long after I'm gone and can stop a bullet. I ran with a Nikkor H.C. 50 F2 lens for the test run, its period correct and a sharp piece of glass and used Kodak Color Plus 200 for the test film.  The photos are classic, a combination of old camera, a classic ...