Bill Smith's Photography

  Finally picked up a Canon 7 Rangefinder to go with my P (Populiare) and my modest screwmount lens kit.  Everyone's first thought is, why not get a Nikon SP rangefinder. Well, SP's aren't cheap and this Canon 7 clocked in at about $300 delivered to my door. It was in great shape, the meter even works and is pretty accurage for a 60 year old selenium meter which usually is dead on arrival. The ergonomics are pretty intuitive, you can switch the frame lines via a dial on top and the really the only drawback is the lack of a hot shoe. Canon ran with a rather unique attachment for a flash that was on the left side of the camera.  All that aside the camera is a dream to shoot with, and you have access to all that Leica screw mount glass floating around out there without having a nervous break down trying to load a Barnack Leica.  I chose a roll of Kosmo Mono 100 and decided to give FX-39 a try as a developer, wow, I got contrasty negs. have a few year I want to print at ...

 Canadian Thanksgiving was great, as usual I went over to my brother's for dinner and it was also an opportunity to do a solo photo walk in the Beaches. I haven't shot with my Leica M4-2 in ages so I loaded up some Eastman Double X and went to town. The lens of choice was the Canon 50 f1.4 in  Leica Thread Mount (LTM) on an M mount adapter. The Japanese Summilux is fabulous glass and I don't see any real need to get the Leica Summilux version as I'm quite happy with what I'm getting here. Somewhere Classic Camera Revival co-host James Lee will vehemently disagree with me and state only Leica glass should be used on Leica cameras. Yeah, sure, but what about people using Tamron, Tokina, Sigma and Zeiss glass on their Nikon and Canon DSLRs? Are the brand police coming down on their collective asses for using off brand glass? I remember an old factory trained Leica repair tech who saw my Canon 50 f1.4 mounted on my M3 and he said that was a mighty fine lens, so there.  ...

I have to shoot more colour film in my Leicas, what I get out my M4-2 with the Japanese Summilix, even what started as an overcast day impressed me. Camera: Leica M4-2, Canon 50 f1.4 LTM lens (the Japanese Summilux). Film: Kodak Ektar 100

April in Toronto can be hit, or miss or March continued on. When I planned the photo walk at the beginning of the week, the weekend forecast called for a decent Saturday and a cold damp Sunday. Well, things got reversed and Saturday up until 2 PM was overcast and felt like March continued on. I wanted to shoot both my Leica's with Kodak Ektar 100 and Kosmo Mono 100, Saturday morning I was committed and it became a 1/125 of a second F8 kind of day. Which brings me to the choice of cameras, my Leica M3 and M4-2. Even though it has been my camera for the past 14 years I still consider it Dad's M3. I bought the M4-2 off my brother eight or nine years ago and it was a smart purchase. I'm from the school of thought even if you're a camera collector (guilty as charged), you should use your gear. Leicas for some reason in some quarters induce what could be best described as Leica derangement syndrome. People either obessesively love, loathe and in some cases fetishize thes...