Trouble coming

From 2007 at Utsukushigahara in Nagano.

An evening in Kanagawa

Shinmaruko across the Tama River from Tokyo

Off Camera lighting

A new group on Flickr has opened called Tokyo Strobist. Tokyo Strobist is based on the original Strobist Flickr pool and will hopefully give interested folks in Japan an opportunity to learn, practice, and show off-camera lighting techniques in either English or Japanese. If enough people are interested, there might even be some meetings in the future.

The photo above used off-camera lighting of a different sort. The dams were closed on the Tamagawa, the river that separates Tokyo and Kanagawa, making the river surface as smooth as glass. (They have done this for several weeks in a row now on Sundays.) It is of Shinmaruko in Kanagawa taken from the Tokyo side of the river.

Late autumn in Okusawa, Tokyo

Tokyo has more houses and building covered in vines than I have seen in any other city.

Some of the most relatively "tame" gulls I've seen are near Yokohama Bay

Landmark Tower, Yokohama

The tallest building in Japan, I believe.

Yokohama Bay 2

Friday evening just before sunset. "Sunset" tends to come relatively early in spots as the buildings block the sun as it get lower. D300 Tmaron 200-500mm @ 500

Yokohama Bay

Friday afternoon at Yokohama Bay in the Minatomirai area. One of the most beautiful locations in Tokyo/Yokohama.

The end of the day

Tamagawa river between Tamagawadaikoen and Shinmaruko, Tokyo/Kanagawa, Japan. Taken with the D300 and Tamron 200-500mm@500mm.

So far, the latest firmware update has made the camera a different beast concerning autofocus. It isn't perfect, but finally I can feel confident using any autofocus mode under certain conditions. It also focuses much more quickly, even with the Tamron 200-500. Birds in flight are now much, much easier to get. It's almost like having a new camera. Knock on wood.

No time to chat

Okusawa, Tokyo in another September storm.

Shopping for camera equipment in Japan

I (and many others here) am often asked by people coming to Japan for a visit where to buy camera equipment.

Camera shops are not as widespread as some seem to believe, especially once you get out of the cities. BIC Camera and Yodobashi Camera are often mentioned as good places and they can be. However, not all are. Some branches have a very poor selection or horrid service or both. If I have to go to one of them, my favorite is the Yodobashi Camera at Yokohama Nishiguchi. It has a wide choice of lenses, cameras, and accessories. The one in Akihabara is also good. I avoid the BIC Camera at Yurakucho near Ginza like the plague as it is poorly stocked and the service--at least in my experience--is near nonexistent.

Another problem with these two chains is that their prices are not especially low. Smaller shops can often beat them for no other reason than the fact that they don't have the "point" system that the big chains use. (Buy something and get 10% of the price in points so you can use it toward future purchases. They often have add about 10% or more to the price to give a discount.)

If you are looking for cameras or lens and not tripods or other accessories, I'd try MAP Camera in Shinjuku. They have a huge selection of used lenses, especially older manual focus lenses. They also have used cameras as well as new. The only problem I have had with them is that they seem to run out of stock on new, popular items frequently.

I went there today to look for a Tokina 10-17 fisheye. They had a used one for ￥47000 and a new one for ￥52000. Unfortunately, the new one was not in stock and I could not see buying a used one for a mere ￥5000 discount.

The same lens is selling at Yodobashi and BIC Camera for over ￥67000, a huge difference which the 10% in points would never make up for.

I finally found one in stock at Amazon Japan for ￥53000. There were others on the site (Marketplace) for as low as ￥49000, but I don't trust Amazon Marketplace all that much.

Anyway, there are a lot of smaller shops in the Tokyo area which are a better choice that the big chains in many cases. They may not speak English at them, but if you know what you want, I don't think that would be a huge problem. It would certainly be easier to deal with that than the extra cost at the chains where most don't speak English either. (I believe some staff does at places like Akihabara and Shinjuku).

By the way, you are not likely to get a better price on new equipment here than you can get in the US.

Downpour in Okusawa

Very heavy thunderstorm (kaminari in Japanese) on Sunday, Sept 7. Since I was hiding under an apartment entrance, I had plenty of time to play with the camera.