Bill Smith's Photography

  My friend, my brother from another mother, Art Liem was in town from Southern California to visit family, and we decided to do a Sunday Photo Walk, he was packing his trusty Pentax LX with a Pentax A 15 F3.5 Super Wide Lens, I rolled with something more old school, and attainable, an Ashai Pentax Spotmatic II loaded up with Kodak Pro Image 100.  The plan was to get to Ossington and Dundas after breakfast and make it up as we went along, which was wandering west on Dundas to Roncessvalles. We stopped by a mutual friend and master darkroom printer Bob Carnie at his gallery, then continued on. Brockton Village or Little Portugal is a very photogenic neighbourhood wiht a lot of street murals. My choice of film Kodak Pro Image 100 (now Kodacolor 100, same stuff different packaging) hit the sweet spot with the Super Multi Coated Takumar lenses.  Lens wise with my Spotmatic II, I leaned heavy on my Super Multi Coated Takumar 28 F2.5 and 50 F1.4. Both lenses rendered colour rea...

Asahi Pentax Spotmatics, I have a soft spot for. I picked up a Spotmatic SP after my brother suggested I get one, they were dirt cheap (at the time) and the Super Multi Coated Takumar glass was something else. About six months later I picked up a Spotmatic F from the Henry's Clearance Outlet. It was the used camera department manager's personal camera.  I shot a lot of film off and on over the years, replaced a light meter (same part as a the one in a later K1000) Fast forward to about early pandemic times, the mirror was starting to seize up, the camera needed servicing. Which I got to finally a few years later.  The Spotmatic F was the last mechanical M42 screw mount in Asahi Pentax's line, there's the ES and ES which were aperture priority bodies but they were different animals, even if they cosmetially looked the same. I dropped the camera off at Halton Camera Exchange in Georgetown at the end of the ski season and it took a few weeks for the camera to work it's...