Bill Smith's Photography

  Jo-Anne had a fabulous idea for a photo walk, chocolate and pasteries. I think she wanted to justify a visit to Soma's King St. location. We started at Graination Lab  and made our way south, first stop, Kop's Donuts. Who knew this little donut spot had two Michelin stars, learn something new every day. The next stop of course was Soma, where the group loaded up on chocolate. From there we tracked northeast stopping at Millie Pattriserie on Oxley St., the last stop before making our way to C' Est What for lunch was Aux Marveilleux de Fred, the pastry shop to end them all. I had one of their chocolate croissants and was spoiled for life.  The Canon F-1 I recently bought got a workout on this outing, using mostly the FD 50 F1.4 SSC lens along with the FDn L Series 20-35 F3.5 Zoom lens. I got really crisp negatives with Ilford HP5, in hindsight I probably could have gotten away with Ilford FP4 125, then again hindsight is 20/20.  My other camera, the Rollei 35S had th...

  The big alternative to traditional colour negative film is motion picture stock, in this case Kodak Vision 3 line of film in both daylight and tungstan grades and used by the kilometer by the likes of Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarrantino. The big difference aside from the remjet layer on motion picture films to allow it to go through movie cameras is also the main reason you can't drop the likes of 50 or 250 D off at your local C-41 lab. The folks at Burlington Camera told me their lab tech at to take their Nortisu apart and flush it multiple times because of said remjet layer.  Fear not, there are options for your colour motion picture stock film processing, you can do it yourself cross processing in C-41 or a ECN-2 chemistry kit and of course getting rid of the Remjet with a pre bath. Alternately if you live in the Greater Toronto Region, you can drop off at Downtown Camera or the new lab in town, Graination  on Spadina Ave who are fast becoming one of my favourit...

 Gear Acquisition Syndrome hit hard back in January, some gear got sold (black Nikon FM with a dead meter and the Canon A-1 which I kinda regret buying), I wound up buying another early Canon F-1 from Halton Camera Exchange, it had been overhauled and the meter converted to 1.5v batteries (yay!). it came with the FD SC 50 F1..8 lens, not a bad bit of glass but not one of the stunners in the Canon line up, that will be switched out with a 50 F1.4 SSC lens.  GAS hit harder when I bought the FDn L Series 20-35 F3.5 lens which is a legend with Canon FD shooters, while I have primes of the 24, 28 and a chrome nose 35 F2 with the thorium element, having a zoom that covers from 20-35mm focal lengths is great for travelling and hiking. The lens itself is an easy to use two touch control for focal length and focusing, having been in the Nikon universe for the past six months, it took a bit to re-aquaint with Canon zoom, sadly a few frames were off at the start of the roll, oh well. ...