Bill Smith's Photography

I went up to Caledon for the morning to pay my annual dues at the Caledon Ski Club and it was a great excuse to get out and do some shooting. i packed my Cnaon P rangefinder and my last roll of Kodak Pro Image 100.  This was a great combo, one camera, one lens and one roll of film. I like the Canon P, pity Canon rangefinders are starting to creep up in price because a Canon 7 would be nice to add to the collection/fleet.  Camera: Canon P, Canon 50 F1.8 LTM lens.  Film: Kodak Pro Image 100. 

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...

I was up in Belfountain a few weeks ago on my way to the Caledon Ski Club for it's Annual General Meeting. Nice day, it's fall, of course I packed a camera with some colour film. I went with my Asahi Pentax K2 and Kodak Color Plus 200. The camera and film are made for each other, end of story. I've talked about this camera elsewhere, it was Pentax's top of the line K mount body in the mid 1970s until the K2DMD came along. I could not believe how jam packed Belfountain was with day trippers. It's a double edged sword, local busiensses love the sales from people stopping, the locals are however getting a little tired dealing with the hordes of day trippers. I mentioend it elsewhere, I call it he BlogTO effect. I don't hike Forks of the Credit on weekends any more because it's too busy. The real treat was photographing a couple of vintage Volkswagans that rolled through on a weekend drive. Camera: Asahi Pentax K2, SMC Pentax M 50 f1.4 lens. Film: Kodak Co...

Belfountain is at a cross roads. Anyone who has read Louise Penny Mysteries always wondered where Three Pines is, this is the GTA version of that mythical hamlet, just a half hour north of Brampton in Caledon, and that's the problem. With the recent change in provincial governments in Ontario, low density suburban tract developers really want to build in the GTA Greenbelt and Oak Ridges Moraine, and we know that's not sustainable. Belfountain isn't immune even though it's deep inside the green belt, a developer bought a tract of farmland on the south end of the hamlet and proposes to build "Country Estates" which is code for ticky-tacky starter mansions in the middle of nowhere. Now here's the problem, every home and business in Belfountain is fed with well water and the water table is pretty much maxed out. Which means if any of the "investors" buy their lovely "Country Estate" will have at best a trickle of water. The only saving g...

Belfountain Conservation Area is more fun in the offseason, even with the grey skies. Camera: Nikon F2 Photomic, Nikkor N 24 f2.8 lens, Nikkor H.C. 50 f2 lens. Film: Fomapan 400, Tmax 1+4

Even with off and on rain, Belfountain looks beautiful. I don't shoot JCH 400 often so it takes a me a bit to get back into the groove with this film. What I should do is test out different 400 speed films I don't use often like Kentmere 400,  Fomapan 400 and Ilford Delta 400 to find their sweet spots. Camera: Minolta SRT 101, MC Rokkor lenses. Film: JCH 400, HC110 B.