Bill Smith's Photography

Been very busy with a couple of projects including my own Shadow of the GTA Greenbelt project which is being hung July 17 at Sovereign House . I have been doing a lot of urban photography, a combination of street and architecture before and after job interviews downtown. I find it relaxes me and the material collated is starting to gel into a future exhibit idea. All the images posted below over the course of a few weeks with an Olympus OM-1md, a variety of Zuiko lenses and Kodak Tri-x 400 processed in HC110 Dilution B.

I finally dragged my brother Alex out to Sherman and Tiffany Falls last weekend. He is an accomplished photographer with very little spare time on his hands. I was working with my trusty Rolleiflex while he worked with a Linhoff 4x5 press camera. It was a rare opportunity for Alex to shoot something out in nature (he lives in Toronto), my nephew Marcus however while loving the idea of being in nature quickly got bored after 20 minutes at each site. My long term game plan is to introduce Marcus to hiking, maybe in a few years. I got some great images out of this excursion and a few will be in an upcoming exhibit in July at Sovereign House in Bronte. More details to follow on that event.

This past Friday night I got a chance to get back into the darkroom for a print making session. I printed Crossing Wellington on Ilford Multigrade IV Matt fibre paper and Brookfield Place on Ilford's RC Pearl. What I struggled with for ages before switching to Kentmere was I was having the hardest time getting decent blacks out of Ilford paper regardless if it was RC or FB. I found by opening up the enlarger lens from F8 to 5.6 and shortening the exposure time under the enlarger head I got magic.

Playing Around With Different Film I am by and large a Kodak Tri-x/Ilford HP5 kind of guy for 120 format film. I do shoot slower once in a while but for most applications I stick to a 400ISO film and play around with it. Now for a bit of a change I picked up a half dozen rolls of Fomapan 400 under the Arista.EDU Ultra label from Freestyle Photographic out of LA. I have used their slower speed films (Fomapan 100 and 200) in 35mm with great results but I wanted to try something a little bigger and I really like the results. I shot the first roll at 250 ISO and processed in Rodinal 1+50 for 11 minutes at 20c and got the sharp results below. I plan to print this negative this weekend to see what I get enlarged on paper. I took this down by the lake in Old Oakville with a Rolleiflex Series E 3.5.

I got my Leica M3 Back last week, Gerry up at Kindermann Canada does amazing work on Leica M mount rangefinder bodies and my M3 feels like a new camera after its CLA (clean, align and lubricate). I took the camera out on a street shoot in Riverdale with Toronto Photowalks and I will talk about group in a future post. It was a great afternoon and I found I left the 50mm lens on the camera, I think on the second roll still in the Camera, I put the 90 f4 Elmar lens on once for one shot.

My Rolleiflex is back from Gerry at Kindermann, I had to send it in for warranty work, something went wrong with the film advance, turns out a small part broke. Well I have the camera back and I took it up with me on my last ski day at Caledon. As you can tell there's no snow on the ground, the daytime high was +18c. I shot the below photographs before and after skiing. I used Kodak Plus 125 a nice old school medium speed black and white film and processed with Xtol 1+1. I prefer my film with a bit of character, my brother Alex prefers tube grained films like Ilford Delta, Kodak Tmax and Fuji Acros. I do to on occasion but I prefer a retro look to my work. I ordered a half dozen rolls of Fomapan 400 in 120 from Freestyle Photographic and I can't wait to try that particular film out.

Want a versatile lens, reach for a 50mm for 35mm or full frame DSLR sensor. I have used in portraiture on the bottom (thank you Alex), landscape on the on the East Hill and documentary on the West Hill Patio at the Caledon Ski Club. I shot the below images with a Zuiko 50 f1.4 on my Olympus OM-1n.

From last weekend, I took the Leica M3 in for an overhaul at Kindermann because of some cold weather issues (sluggish shutter). The camera is in great hands with a factory trained Leica tech and it should be good as new in a week or so.

My Leica M3 is getting an overhaul from Kindermann Canada, I had a situation back on Saturday when the shutter decided to get sluggish in the -3c temperatures. That has not happened to me before. So a semi retired factory trained Leica tech my brother recommended to is going to work his magic and itt will be a couple hundred dollars well spent. I managed to get the shutter working properly and managed two rolls. After I think frame 12 you can tell the shutter got sluggish. Sort of like everything below 1/500 became bulb. The remedy was warming the camera up to room temperature and exercising the shutter. Mr. Gerry Smith (no relation alas) is The Canadian factory trained Leica tech and I figure getting the CLA done now makes sense because I don't know how long he wants to keep working even part time. The other thing with this set I managed to do was try HC110 Dilution B again, a developer combination I used when I started developing black and white film four years ago. Rating Kodak ...

Old Slides from the Archives I dug into the archives recently and re-scanned some material I shot four years ago during the Analog Photography Users Group Conference in Toronto. Over 300 hard core film photographers specializing in different subject areas descended down on Elevator Labs in Leaside for four days of seminars and workshops. I participated in the Sunrise and a day later street photography workshops, taking away a lot in terms of knowledge. I have landscape photographer Robert Teague to thank for enlightening me to the joys of Fuji Velvia 100. I shot with an Olympus OM-1 for the whole conference and the Epson V500 does wonders in scanning the slides. The rusty truck was shot at the Distillery District and the remaining photos were taken at Humber Bay Park way too early in the morning in May 2006.

I took my Canon FTb up with me last weekend up skiing. I picked up a 625 Wein cell battery to see if the meter. The FTb was made in the early 1970s and the original batteries were mercury based and of course due to environmental concerns are no longer available. The Wein Cell gives off the same voltage without the environmental impact. I used this camera before with a hand held meter and the shutter speeds are just fine which is surprising for a 37 year old camera. The meter works but takes a little getting used to. The FTb uses almost a modified spot meter principle as opposed to center weighted used in Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Leicaflex and the Canon F1. It takes a little getting used to if you are used to center weighted metering. One last thing, I found that helps a lot with bright sunny days and there's snow on the ground to slap on a neutral density filter if you are shooting with 400 ISO film. Otherwise getting a decent exposure would almost impossible without a slower spee...

Ontario winter as it was meant to be, well this was a few weeks ago when we had winter. The weather forecast right now is almost more late March than late January. I shot this right after New Years in the Belfountain Conservation Area. Gear and film: Nikon FM, Nikkor Ai 28 f3.8 and AiS 50 f1.8 lenses and Kodak Tri-x processed in Xtol 1+1.