Bill Smith's Photography

 Haven't shot medium format much this year, just how life shakes out. If I'm headed to Jo-Anne's I'm more inclined to shoot a 35mm SLR or rangefinder because, it's just easier. Shooting original Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 through one of my Rolleiflexes was a nice change of pace. Damn the tonality with Acros is something else. I can see why my friend James Lee has a walk in freezer full of the stuff.  Another part of this post is a cautionary tale, it was my brithday last week and I got a birthday present no photographer ever wants to get. A short story, I was running with Lightroom 5, an owned copy that first saw life on my Macbook Pro many moons ago. I kept it when everyone else long went onto the Creative Cloud train, figuring I would upgrade when I retire this iMac I'm currently on next year.  Well, the day before my birthday Lightroom 5 crashed like a Zeppelin into a New Jersey farm field. Figured ok, I'll do a restore from back up. Nope. Since Lighroom 5...

I've always been a prime lens kinda guy, who over the past few years been trying out manual focus zoom lenses, usually in the telephoto length but more recently in what I call the "walk around" variety. In this case the Zuiko MC 35-70 F3.6 Zoom lens. There's no macro feature, just coverage from near wide angle (35mm) to near telephoto (70mm). I used this lens last fall on an Olympus OM-1 on a city photo walk on a really grim November Saturday. On the Olympus OM-4Ti, this particular lens sings.  Configured of 10 elements in 8 groups, the 35-70 F3.6 is a constant aperture compared to the F3.5-4 variable aperture and is the desired lens compared to the slightly slower F4. The colour rendering is amazing and sharp corner to corner. I plan to take this lens with me up to Northern Muskoka at the end of September along with a telephoto zoom like the 60-200 F4. This zoom lens is great for travel and wouldn't hesitate to take it with me on a trip.   If you own a bunch of O...

I really needed to get out and into nature, so Jo-Anne and I daytripped up into Caledon, first starting in Belfountain for coffee and she could buy some local maple syrup and then going for a hike in the Palgrave Forest and Nature Preserve off Highway 50 and south of Highway 9 near Palgrave. I needed a walk in the woods after the hectic week of dealing with my mom's passing back on May 28th and to get just get away everything for a few hours. Jo-Anne has been my rock through all this. Needless to say, the walk in the woods helped a lot.  Never really explored the northern end of Caledon before, and never been through Palgrave. There's a great craftbrewery and taproom called Caledon Hills Brewery, their signature Vienna Lager hit the spot along with a giant pretzel after the hike. We both suffered menu envy but a big dinner at home was planned so giant pretzel it was, this time around.  Nikkormat FTn, Nikkor H.C 50 F2 lens.  Film: Kentmere 400, Ilfotec HC 1+31.  ...