Bill Smith's Photography

Funny what can happen in the space of three weeks, I thought I would be skiing to the end of March, well that plan got kiboshed pretty quick due to a global pandemic. Which is a shame because there was still a decent base at Caledon Ski Club and we could have made it to April, no problem. I've been skiing longer than taking photographs and doing the math, this was season 44 that was, and it ended with a whimper. At least I documented the last ski weekend, at least I can go back to this post and remember what perfect pair of days they were. Fast forward a week, I bolted up to grab the Smith clan's ski equipment out of the locker when the email came out the club was shutting down along with just about every ski hill in North America.  Skiing down the hill wasn't the problem, riding up the chairlift and having lunch and/or apres ski drinks in the lodge was. Pity, I figured there was three more weeks of skiing easy with the base we had. Welcome to the new normal kids. Cam...

March started off like a lamb to borrow the old cliche, and things took a stranger turn, more on that later. I had one beautiful weekend of skiing which you will see in the next post, I want to separate the content. What amazed me was how fast winter packed it in, more ways than one, what you see was shot three weeks ago. The snow now is pretty much gone on the fields and front yards. We might get the annual Easter snow storm, or not, tha'ts living in Southern Ontario for you. Now, Minolta X-700, I have growing respect for this camera, and it dusts the Canon AE-1P by virtue of using S76 batteries as opposed to the 4SR44 battery. The other thing, the X-700 doesn't disguise the fact it's a plastic shell camera, and that's ok, just don't drop it. From where I'm sitting this might be the ultimate travel SLR kit, because these cameras are cheap, in fact the two I own were gifted to me. The Minolta MD 28-85 zoom lens, is pretty much the ultimate travel glass, while...

I'm usually a prime lens guy, but over the past few years, I've learned to embrace zoom lenses for certain tasks and situations. In my last blog post I talked a bit about my third Minolta XD body in my fleet, a chrome XD-11. Now here's the lens I popped on for the test drive, the Minolta MD 28-85 F3.5-4.5 Macro zoom. These lenses were gaining in popularity into the 1980s as a growing number of customers wanted "one lens that can do almost anything." Well, such a lens would invite engineering compromises but Minolta proved really good at their zoom lenses, the 28-85 along with the MD 75-150 F4 and the MD  70-210 F4 was sharp glass. My experience with the 28-85 delivered almost perfect results save for tiny bit of vignetting at the 28mm position. That back be solved with some careful cropping. From what I read on the Rokkor Files and elsewhere, this lens has a steller reputation as a strong performer. Ok, the lens ain't all that fast but as a vacation lens...