The Signet & AE-1

The journey into Cruickshank Park was one filled with ducks, geese, screaming kids, and some okay photo opportunities.  I should get a longer lens for my camera as a "JUST IN CASE" scenario.  Today was one of those days.  Geese attacking ducks on the water, seagulls fighting ducks for bread, and pigeons landing on the railings.  With a 24mm lens on my AE-1 and a 44mm on the Signet, it just didn't seem right that I try for some action shots, but I did anyway..  I believe I got some, but it's hard to tell on the negatives. 
I haven't been taking my digital camera along, as I haven't felt the urges to shoot some IR right now.  Trying to pack light at work these past couple of days.
Tomorrow will be no different, with a choice of a Yashica Electro G35 on the table, along with, I think, my Kalimar A (Welmy 2), it should be a fun and interesting day.

There was a man at the park who was feeding the ducks and geese, although the signs there clearly state.. "DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!"
Well, nobody, apparently, reads those signs, because they all feed the damn ducks and geese!

This gentleman, it's not the first time that I've photographed him feeding the birds, actually spends a fair amount of time, not just feeding the birds, but relaxing with them.  It's pretty interesting to see the birds pretty much landing on him to get to the food in his hands and bag.
Between feeding the ducks and geese bread, which the 'gulls are more than willing to dive in to get, he tosses a handful or three of wild-bird seed out.
The pigeons love it, as do the ducks, as I watched them shovel 
beak full after beak full of the stuff down their own gullets.

 Here is a photo of a gull diving down to get to a piece of bread in the water.  Sadly, I missed the shot by a mere moment.  I was on the trigger just a split second too early to capture the gull splashing down onto the river to collect the bread.
I tried a couple of times to capture it, but was moments too late.  I should bring a longer lens to try it again, but there's no reason to say that I'll be successful next time, just because of the longer lens..  Maybe more light will help, as the day was badly overcast!

I like to find different structures in nature.  This almost reminds me of a multi-story building with balconies.  Maybe I'm looking too far into this.

Now this is an oddity.   I wasn't sure if this is a shopping cart that is upturned in the water, but without the basket attached, and therefore just the wheeled carriage, or if this was something else, like a dolly.
All I do know is that it's tossed into the river, as if the water should remove the garbage from our shores.
It's quite depressing that people actually do this, and ruin our fresh water drinking supply. I don't now if they realize that without fresh clean water, we will be in some serious trouble!
This now leads to the side story of the Kodak Signet 35.  I'm actually rather impressed with this little rangefinder.  It needs a little bit of work, as the rangefinder is slightly off, and you can barely see it in the viewfinder, but if used as a zone-focusing camera, you can actually get some very sharp images.
The 44mm ƒ/3.5 Ektar lens is quite remarkably sharp, and considering it is a triplet lets, renders some nice smooth out of focus areas.  Mind you, their latest film like, Ektar, it just makes sense!
I'm used to a lot of these older lenses causing swirly bokeh instead of smooth and straight, which this lens actually does, and is a nice change!  Don't get me wrong, I do like swirly bokeh, but not all the time, as some lenses have a habit of rendering.

A little bit a over-exposure, and a silver film pressure plate, and you get some amazing bloom!  It begins to make it feel almost like an IR film.  The Anti-Halation layer, which is not present on this film, would help to prevent this form of bloom.  For some, it is not liked.  I really like this bloom!

Although I'm just starting to get familiar with this camera, I think it, and I, will have a very long relationship with each other.  The lens is just awesomely sharp, has a close-focus of 2 feet (almost unheard of with rangefinders) which is actually really easy to adjust for parallax, considering the actual way that this camera is laid out.

I think that using this camera along side an SLR will be a winning combination, regardless of what SLR that would be.  Besides having to get the rangefinder adjusted so I that it is actually being projected into the viewfinder, a similar problem I am having with my Konica S2, it works splendid as a zone-focusing camera.

 River Over-pass, Lawrence Ave. West @ Weston Road.