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-...

The X-570 was positioned as the slightly less expensive and stripped down version of the X-700. It only came with aperture priority, which ironically made it a favourite camera for in the know Minolta shooters in the 1980s. The X-570 didn't come with shutter priority or program mode but it did come with a better metering read out better suited to advanced amateur shooters. By the 1980s Minolta gave up trying to get into the professional market which was dominaed by Canon and Nikon.   The X-570 like it's fuller featured brother the X-700 make great cameras for those just starting out for an expereinced shooter with an extensive Minolta Rokkor MC or MD set of lenses who want a lighter weight camera body for travel or hiking. I found taking this camera around Bronte Harbour here in Oakville I almost forget I have it  thanks to the extensive use of high quality and durable pastics. The big bonus I see with the X-570 over it's main competitor, the Canon AE-1 Program is the use o...

I was gifted a MD Rokkor 28-85 3.5-4.5 zoom lens courtesy fellow Classic Camera Revival host Mike Bitaxi last year, and it's a really nice piece of glass. In terms of general purpose zoom, it dusts, Nikon and Canon's offerings in similar focal lengths. Now I exposed a variety of focal lengths. I found I got some vignetting at 28mm which can be cropped out when framed loosely, other than that all the negative scans look fabulous. The Rokkor Files did an extensive write up on the MD Rokkor 28-85 3.5-4.5 zoom lens and were very impressed with the performance. If you're looking for a nice walk around lens and you shoot Minolta manual focus, MD Rokkor 28-85 3.5-4.5 zoom lens is a great solution, especially for travel. Camera: Minolta X-570, MD Rokkor 28-85 3.5-4.5 zoom lens, Film: Fomapan 400, HC110 B.

Fomapan Action 400 is a polarizing film, some people love it, others hate it. Personally, I don't get the hate on for this film. This post I'm going to talk about the film, next post, the other test, the MD Rokkor 28-85 3.5-4.5 zoom lens. I had some experience in the past years ago with Fomapan 400 in 120 format and I was quite happy with the results. This time out I wanted to prove some friends wrong, Fomapan 400 is a decent film if you expose it right and have a decent processing flow. From my research I deduced I'm dealing with a true ISO of around 250 so set the meter to that and proceed accordingly. I processed in Kodak's HC110 developer in dillution B, and used Ilford's stop and Rapid Fix. The negatives dried flat which is great because this past winter both Kodak Tri-X and even Ilford's HP5 400 were cupping to some degree when drying. The end results are below, a rather nice 1970s Kodak Tri-X look to the images. Yes there's grain but it is a plea...

The X-570 is a really nice camera to work with, pity it never sold as well as the X-700. I can see why this camera has a strong cult following. Camera:Minolta X-570, MD 50 f1.7 lens. Film: Ilford HP5 400, HC110 B.