Bill Smith's Photography

I follow a site called the Art of Photography and they have a great series of video podcasts, well produced and geared to wide photography enthusiast audience. I'm sharing two of them today to give an idea what is in my camera bag.  This is a podcast on 35mm film photography and a great showcase on the Nikon F3HP , one of my favourite cameras and I consider it my go to for critical work. What I found interesting is the F3 was in production for around 18 to 20 years almost from 1980 to 2002 depending what source you want to refer to. The other interesting fact is the camera was designed by Italdesign chief Giorgetto Giugiaro who also designed for Ferrari, Maserati and Volkswagen in the 1960s and '70s.  A second podcast, this time on twin lens reflex cameras. For the record I own three:  a Rolleiflex Series 3.5 Zeiss Planar , Rolleicord IV as well as Mamiya C220 and all of them take amazing photographs. TLRs are compact and relatively lightweight cameras...

My brother Alex is my worst enabler. I now want a Rolleiflex after trying out his Rolleicord recently on a hike near Belfountain. For those not familiar, Twin Lens Reflex cameras have been around for about 80 years and use 120 roll film. The Rolleicord is the prosumer TLR derived from it's "big brother" the Rolleiflex and differs a little on features and ergonomics. So why beat around the bush, get the rolleiflex and be done with it. As much as people merit the versatility of a Hasseldlad 500 series 6x6 SLR system, personally I rather have the TLR. You only get one choice of lens on the camera as it is built in, mechanically it's really simple and it does not weigh a ton. What I love about medium format photography is you have to slow down, plan your exposures a lot more than 35mm and be really fussy with your metering of the scene. I used Ilford Delta 400 black and white film processed in Xtol 1+1. Not my usual choice of film, it's all Henrys Oakville had in st...