Bill Smith's Photography

 I love shooting in the snow, it makes familiar landscapes look fresh and different, also what a difference 24 hours makes, while I was struggling in the gloom last post. I was getting nothing but gold here, same camera, same roll of film. Those not used to shooting in the winter, a hand held incident light meter is your friend, alternately over expose by two stops so your snow doesn't look grey, like the skies over the Great Lakes region.  I loved being out in the snow, it was Christmas Day and the last day prior to Lockdown 2.0, it has pretty much melted as of writing this post and feels more like March instead of early January but I'm not skiing at the moment, so, at least the kosher sea salt isn't being rubbed into the open wound. A serious dump of snow would have been really cruel for all the Ontario alpine skiers out there.  Camera: Nikkormat FTn, Nikkor S 50 f1.4 lens.  Film: Lomography Berlin 400, HC110 B. 

 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...

It was a grey December, and it shows.   Nikon F, Nikkor S 50 f1.4 lens, Nikkor H 28 F3.5 lens.  Film: Lomography Berlin 400, HC110 B. 

Sometimes I have to take dad's camera off the shelf and give it a workout. My blog posts are all over the place in terms of order, but that's ok, we're in lockdown again so enjoy the ride.   Dad's Nikon F was made in mid to late 1960 and I usually have either a Nikkor H 50 2 or S 50 f1.4 lens on it. The camera is a basic tank, no meter though a clip on meter was available in the accessories line up before the Photomic meter heads came along. The camera is a joy to shoot with and metering isn't a issue with a handheld meter.  Film wise I'm using Lomography Berlin 400 black and white film which is re-spooled ORWO N74, am I going to grab more when it's done, probably not, I'm planning to go deep on Fomapan 400 for a while.  Camera: Nippon Kogaku Nikon F, Nikkor S 50 f1.4, H 28 F3.5 and P 105 F2.5 lenses.  Film: Lomography Berlin 400 Film, HC110 B. 

Lomography is always out to do interesting stuff. They aren't the first company to re-spool motion picture film stock for still photography. They have whoever taken ORWO UN 54 and N74 and renamed them as Potsdam and Berlin. I've shot UN 54 it's a great 100 ISO black and white film, I've shot N74 under the Bergger BRF+400 name. What Lomography has done is make both films available in 120, and I had one roll of Berlin to shoot and it went through my brother's Texas Leica (yes kids, I want one, bad) and the results you see below. It's nice film but I found it has a tendency to develop newton rings while scanning, and this has only happened with this particualar emulsion. Nothing a little cloning can't fix. I processed in HC110 B, the results are pretty good. Now I do plan to try D76 with some rolls of Berlin in 35mm, we'll see. Is it worth $11 CAD a roll? Well, if you are looking for something a bit different, yes, you get a chance to shoot black and whi...