Bill Smith's Photography

  I don't go up to Georgetown much, but that might be changing. Halton Camera Exchange has two camera repair techs one of whom, apprenticed under the store founder who was also factory trained by Leica. I already had a Canon New F-1 AE serviced and I have some other gear there getting work done.  Doing the Halton Camea Exchange visit gave me an excuse to photograph around Glen Williams which you could call a creative neighbourhood (formerly a separate village), I can't recommend the Copper Kettle, the local pub enough for lunch or dinner. The one thing that soured me on Georgetown is there's no local public transit to speak of. GO Transit services Georgetown and it can get you to Toronto, or Kitchener-Waterloo in the other direction, its getting to the station that's the challenge.  The camera of choice on this run is my Minolta X-570 which I bought of Film Photography Podcast Co-Host Mark O'Brien a few years ago. While everyone goes gaga over the Canon AE-1, the X-...

 We shoulda brought shotguns to this, dialogue from Pulp Fiction that equally describe film choices on what had to be the bleakest day for shooting, Christmas Eve. To call skies pale anthricite is putting it mildly, I really should have packed Ilford HP5 and pushed to 1600 ISO but had Lomography Berlin 400 (respooled ORWO N74) and I don't have experience pushing this film, hence the quote from Jules Wingfield from Marcelus Wallace's crew, "We should have brought shotguns to this."  I rolled with the situation and ran with my super fast Nikkor NC 28 F2 lens for the vast majority of the walk which was two days before lockdown 2.0 starting on December 26, 2020. This lens delivers.  Lomo Berlin has a certain look and yeah, I think I prefer Bergger Pancro 400 for tonality, I have one more roll in another Nikkormat and that will be my last roll. It was fun experimenting with Berlin but, I'll stick to Potsdam or ORWO UN54 instead.  Camera: Nikkormat FTn, Nikkor S 50 f1.4...

Funny thing, I never really wandered around downtown Georgetown, I'm either visiting friends or, on the rare occasion, stopping by Halton Camera Exchange, but they are all located on the edge of town, sort of. In some regards Georgetown is sort of like Uxbridge in some ways, both are located on former Grand Trunk Railway lines, both are in hilly environments, both have craft breweries.  That's where it ends, Georgetown doesn't have an emotional pull for me. It's a nice little town on the edge of the GTA but Uxbridge on the other end is in the same neck of the woods where the Smith family settled two centuries ago.  When I stopped by Georgetown a few weeks ago, they had a Saturday Farmer's Market on the main drag, and people came out. You can tell we're in the new normal with all the Covid warnings on the edge with volunteers.  Camera: Olympus OM-2n, Zuiko lenses.  Film: Ultrafine Extreme 400, HC110 B.