Stratford Ontario. Who cares if this is the home town of Justin Beiber? It is a really nice town and great for fans of the Bard (the dead English poet, not Justin). Continue Reading
Architecture
This is one surprising beautiful small town in Ontario. Is it because it is a well-preserved historical town or does it have a secret identity? Continue Reading
There is a place where the maelstrom of modern times has not infiltrated…and you can buy ice cream there too!
What can you possibly get (photographically speaking) within a 1 km walk in Toronto? Well……
At Fanshaw Pioneer Village on Canada Day with my DA 35mm ltd, 70mm ltd and an old manual Vivitar 19mm f3.8. The village is a fun place to be and I wish they had lots more money to add more historic buildings, or perhaps build replicas.
May Day, was once observed in the 1980s as the time the Soviet Union stroked their egos by parading their shiny ICBMs, mechanized army, neatly pressed uniforms and what can be described as a silly marching step. The Soviets also made cameras and lenses. I have a Russian Zenit-E and a Helios 44-2 (58mm f2.0). I have not used the camera but the lens is an old M42 mount that fits nicely on my Pentax (via an adaptor). Of course it is fully manual settings but the Pentax can meter via the magic green button. The day was a cold, wet and windy. I even considered it an unpleasant day. Weather does not bother me but when you go out to shoot the city and it is grey and devoid of good contrast, spits rain for 5 minutes at an interval of every 10 mins, the day is not really fun for photogs. Seems to start spitting rain as you find a nice shot. Nonetheless, I wandered the city for almost 2 hours (the limit of my free parking) and used my funky artsy Russian lens on May Day. The lens is very soft wide open, but being such a grey day I needed the light. I also had to bump the iso up for many shots to about 1600. These images have been processed in Light Room to boost the saturation and contrast. I have also removed noise. Some photos, have been tweaked moreso just for effect. This is a fun lens but you need to think and use your digital like a manual film camera. This old Helios at 58mm (87mm after crop factor) makes for some challenging ‘street photograpy’. Have a look here for more info on this Russian lens http://forum.mflenses.com/complete-list-of-helios-lenses-getting-closer-t26100.html