Bill Smith's Photography

 In my Canon pro body fleet I ran with a F-1n and a pair of New F-1's, I did own a first generation F-1 but parted ways with it in a trade for another Nikon F2.  Well, being a collector I wanted to complete the F-1 fleet, and of course I needed another and it was going to be one of the Olympic F-1s, Canon had them for Montreal in 1976, Lake Placid in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. In my case I just wanted the Monteral Olympics F-1, for a few reasons, one, 1976 was further along with the first generation product cycle. Two, I was born in Montreal, lived there until I was 12 before the family moved to Southern Ontario in 1980 and three, I saw the Montreal Summer Olympics in person.  So, what's the story behind the Olympics F-1's? Under the hood they are like any other F-1 from their respective series. Canon wanted some of Nikon's professional business, especially with photojournalists, some of it was entice a few to try the F-1 system out. The other objective was sponsorsh...

 We were talking about 50 ISO black and white films on the Classic Camera Revival recently and by happenstance the conversation shifted to 510 Pryo, probably the most safe and user friendly of the family of staining developers. I've used Pyrocat HD in the past, courtesy of the chemical toxicty, I was scared to use the stuff. Loved the results.  Contrast that with 510 Pyro, while I would not recommend using it as a drinks mixer, it's a lot safer to use. The thought process is a high accutance AND fine grained developer that tames the highlights and pulls the shadows out. Mixing the stuff is easy and the vast majority of times are under 15 minutes, the big kicker, you use a water stop to retain the staining properties. Fix as per usual with the fixer of your choice, I'm partial to Ilford.  The negatives take on a sepia tone. Now, scanning gets interesting. I scan into TIFF files and import into Lightroom. I use Silverfast 9 Plus, and settled on the Ilford HP5 setting after ...