Bill Smith's Photography

  Yup, another Leica SLR, an R5, this time. I went back and forth between the R5 and R7, when I was looking for a second "modern" R body and settled on the R5 for the battery requirement, only two SR44/Engergizer 357s vs the four the R7 required.  The R5, like it's mechanical sibling the R6 is a distant offspring of the Leitz-Minolta partnership where camera and lens technologies were shared between both companies. The R5 has two metering modes, spot and sort of a matrix metering mode, both deliver accurate readings along with manual, aperture priority, shutter priority, and a couple of program modes.  I foud the R5 easy to use and was shooting in both manual and aperture priority modes for the duration of the photowalk. It was also an opportunity to try out two new lenses, the 35 F2 Summicron and 21 F4 Super Angolan. I've shot with the Super Angulon before when I borrowed my brother Alex's R4 kit 18 years ago, it's fun glass. The 35 F2 Summicron lens is perfe...

 The Beaches Winter Stations Installation is an annual event where teams from different arcitecture schools and design firms design shelters around, or, near by lifeguard chairs at Woodbine Beach. I usually photograph them near the end of the month around March Break, this time around at the beginning of the month, usually mother nature and people aren't kind to the installations.  This is also another opportunity to shoot with the Leica R6, the first time around was Ilford HP5 400, and photographing the Beaches ice build up which is all gone by the end of February/early March. The first time around I used the spot metering feature, on this roll I used Large Field Averaging which was Leica's answer to I guess Matrix metering or perhaps closer to Minolta's CLC metering.  I also shot with Lomo Colour 400 C-41 a chance to push Large Field Averaging metering along with seeing how prime Leica R glass played with colour film. The skies were mixed being more cloudy than sunny wh...