Bill Smith's Photography

 I was doing some photo walk research, I wanted to piece something together around The Well and the King and Bathurst/Portland area, it's still a work in progress. It was a solo walk because Jo-Anne was up north visiting family as her brother was visiting from Scotland. I also wanted to stop by Soma Chocolate's King St. West outpost for some chocolate bars to spoil her. I also wanted to shoot around King St. West which like my neighbourhood in Midtown Toronto is morphing at breakneck speed. I remember going to the Rotterdam Brew Pub (which became the Amsterdam Brewery) at King and Portland and the neighbourhood, had, character. More accurately in the mid 1990s it was rough around the edges but starting to evolve from the garment district to a marketing/tech hub, and much later club district.  I rolled with a black Nikon F2 Photomic, it is one of two in my collection, it was traded to me for an early Canon F-1. Shot with it a little last fall and was then loaned out to Alex Luy...

 I wasn't planning to buy another Nikon F (famous last words) but Joan had a beast in the used section, a black Nikon F Photomic FTN with the F36 Motor Drive. My brother has a motor drive equiped Nikon F but I think its in chrome, can't remember. So I have this delightful beast from 1969, like it needs eight AA Batteries to move the film advance beast and weigh as much as an F5 but nowhere as ergonomic, bear in mind the beast is a year younger than I am and with the number of Nikon F's I have, I can cosplay Dennis Hopper's role as the strung out photo journalist in Apocalypse Now.  Another thing I got from Burlington Camera was a Nikkor Q 200 F4, not an expensive lens, but one that's been around since the beginning in the Nikkor lens line up. Loved by photo journalists to pull in subject matter up in close. Mounting the lens to the motor drive equiped F gave the body balance, much like attaching a zoom to your Nikon F5.  Camera: Nikon F Photomic FTN with the F36 Mot...