Bill Smith's Photography

  There's a story, I've played around with the Leica R system but never took the plunge, well, my brother Alex, enabled me. He had a decent Leica R collection but sold it to streamline his collection prior to moving house back in 2009. Turns out there's seller's remorse that grew over the years. Alex bought back in the past few years, through a text conversation via Facebook Messenger enabled me. I blought a chrome Leicaflex SL with working meter, a 2 cam 50 F2 Summicron R lens. and a 35 F2.8 Elmarit, also a 2 cam R lens.  The SL feels solid, one reviewer commented it felt lke an old Cadillac, I vehemently disagree with that statement, this camera is the embodiment of of an early 1970s Mercedes 300 SEL with the 6.3 Litre V8. The shutter sound is hypnotic a solid thunk.  R lenses are over engineeed and the optical quality is something else.  I loaded up my SL with a roll of Ilford HP5 400 and shot ir around downtown Oakville which felt odd in some way. I moved away ov...

  I only shot with one film stock this trip, and chose Flic Film spooled Eastman Kodak Vision 3 250D motion picture stock which is the base for Cinestill 400D. Graination Lab has a dedicated ECN2 line and can turn around in a couple of days. I prefer shooting with Vision 3 over Portra 400, I find it more versatile and I get a better handle on skin colour.  Once we were done hiking at Limberlost Forest it was a short trip back to Billie Bear, the weekend is winding downa and at some point it will be time to head home. I wanted to finish the roll in the F4 and switch back to the FM2n which is a lot lighter.  Camera: Nikon F4, Nikkor AIS lenses.  Film: Eastman Kodak Vision 3 250D, ECN2 processed by Graination Lab.