Bill Smith's Photography

Ultrafine Extreme 400 has been getting a lot of street cred recently as the cheep and cheerful film that punches way, way, way above it's price point and plain delivers the goods. I've shot it at near box speed (320 ISO) over the Summer, that was great when you had a lot of light to work with. Toronto is now headed into grey sky season, which on this day is distressed pewter. I loaded up some UFX 400 into my Nikon F2SB and took it in with me to the city to do some urbran photography and put the film through it's paces. Some exposures were really thin as in I didn't even bother to scan the frames. Don't know why that happened as other frames were just bang on in terms of exposure. Grain isn't too bad at 1600 and I processed in dilution B HC110, a developer every black and white photographer should be familiar with if they process at home. The frames that turned out great are keepsers. Will this replace HP5 400 as my film to push to 1600, no, but it will supp...

Mark O'Brien of the Film Photography Podcast was in Toronto for a few days and we met up for a photo walk with fellow local photographer Nancy Urquhart Bueler, with our luck we got hit with some snow the day of. The game plan was hit the east end of the city for the Distillery District and later on the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant in the Beaches. Mark hails from Ann Arbour Michigan, so the weather wasn't anything exotic and we made due, granted our trip eastward was hampered by a fire in a Hydro (electrical) vault at King and Yonge Sts. We slowly made it where we wanted to go. I really like shooting in snowstorms. Camera: Nikon FM, Nikkor Ai 50 f1.4 lens. Film: Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 1600, processed in Xtol stock.

Creeping up on rush hour, the windchill is starting to bite and you just want to get home.. Camera: Nikon FM, Nikkor Ai 50 f2 lens. Film: Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 1600 and processd in Xtol stock.

I got weak spot for Pentax Spotmatics, one day while at Burlington Camera picking up some colour film I had in for processing, Joan (aka my camera pusher) said, "Did you want to see something neat?" Of course I said sure and she pulled out this old camera bag that just came into the store, and it had this black Pentax Spotmatic SP.  It had been overhauled at some point in the last 10 years and the only thing that need replacing was the bumper foam, an easy enough fix, so I bought the camera. The meter works but isn't accurate (no surprise for a camera the same age as I am) but the shutter was bang on. Again, Super Multi Coated Takumar glass rocks colour film nicely. Anyone who says Toronto is boring for photography isn't looking at the right places. Camera: Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP, Super Multi Coated Takumar lenses. Film: Lomography 400 C-41

Canon FTb's I love them, I even wrote an article on the Film Shooters Collective regarding this body. I never really bonded with Canon A-series bodies, I learned on a AE-1, sold it, bought another one years later, sold it again. Canon FTb's and F-1's stick around, both are built like tanks and easy to work with. Camera: Canon FTbn, FD 50 f1.4 SSC lens. Film: Ilford HP5 400, HC110 B.

I shot my last roll of Kodak Tmax 400, technically it's a brilliant film, processes nicely in Tmax developer, but for some reason while it's great, I didn't bond with it, I like my 400 ISO films with traditional grain structure. I have shot kilometres of Ilford HP5 and Kodak Tri-X over the years, speaking of which I just picked up ten rolls from Downtown Camera and will be exploring this classic over the next few months. Now if I was stuck with only Tmax 400, I'll shoot it, from my experience the film starts to sing being exposed around 250 ISO when processed in Tmax developer 1+4 dilution. Again depending on developer and your shooting style, results may vary. What bugs me is the fact Tmax 400 just kills fix solution which does not happen with Ilford Delta films. I love my Ilford Delta 100, and someday I'll figure out Delta 400, probably when I finish off the Tri-X. Camera: Canon P, Canon 50 f1.4 M-39 lens. Film: Kodak Tmax 400, Tmax Dev 1+4. ...

Summer winds down and people are back at work. Camera: Asahi Pentax MX, SMC Pentax M 50 f2 lens. Film: Ilford HP5, HC110 B.

I own three Canon F-1's, a pair from the mid 1980s and an early example from my guess 1971 or '72. Now the early Canon F-1 had this mystery light leak that was driving me nuts and testing the patience of my camera repair tech in Hamilton. We finally figured out what the problem was, there's a gasket between the focusing screen and the mirror box, well some repair tech forgot to put it back in, figured that out after four ruined rolls of film. Now for the test drive, I took the camera in with me last Thursday in the afternoon before an IABC/Toronto panel discussion on trends in interactive design. The F-1 is a great camera, also a heavy one too especially mated with the FD 35 f2 lens. I'm not complaining because the problem's solved. Yay!! The other thing I did is play around with Bergger BRF 400, to date I have been processing it in HC110, I get good results but curly negatives. This time out I used D76 1+1 (one part developer stock solution, other part water) ...