Bill Smith's Photography

 Lets roll the clock back for a blog post to a cool grey and grim very early May, I bought a new lens for my Leica kit, a classic actually, no, it's not a 50 F1.4 Summilux, it's a Carl Zeiss ZM Sonnar 50 F1.5 T lens, a recreation of the classic pre war lens formula that was available in Leica M39 and Contax mounts.  The current 50 F1.5 is made in Japan by Cosina for...

 A day trip to the Toronto Islands is a mini vacation, sadly when you get to the Ward's Island Ferry Dock, returning to reality is a bit jarring. Especially when you see the hordes of people trying to get to the Islands in the afternoon. The Toronto Islands themselves have two remnents of a much bigger commmunity that was pushed out in the 1950s when the newly minted Met...

The best time to visit the Toronto Islands during the Summer is in the middle of the week, and before school was out for the year. The secret is get to the ferry terminal earlier in the morning. Other than that, the Toronto Islands is a magical place. I find it's a mini holiday from reality. 

I made the wise choice with one of my Olympus OM-2n's, the black one and ...

I always use Rollei Supergrain developer with Fomapan film stocks,  there were three rolls of Fomapan 200 Creative to be processed, let's roll with 510 Pyro and see what we get. With the 1+100 dilution, this developer was a no brainer for three rolls of 35mm film, or two rolls of 120 in one of the bigger Patterson Tanks. 

Um, wow, a really nice set of sharp ne...

 I haven't shot with my Minolta XE-7 since my move to Toronto two years ago. It was between the SRT series of cameras Minolta had in their line up, fully mechanical with CLC metering which was quite advanced for the day and above it, the far ahead of its time pro body XK/M while a brilliant pro body, was a sales failure. The XE-7 however had a market with advanced amateu...