Author: travel67

Quick Release Danger

Published by travel67

I was out snorkeling a week ago and found this camera in amongst the coral. It’s a nice camera. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’m a big fan of these waterproof shockproof point and shoots that can take a licking and keep on clicking. The problem is that this camera had been underwater for days if not weeks or even months. Water head leaked inside the body so that the camera no longer worked and the 8GB micro SD card inside was unreadable. As is probably clear from the photo (or the title of the blog) the culprit here is the ever so convenient quick release strap connector. The owner lost their camera and quite possibly all their photos from their holiday / honeymoon / deployment in Okinawa. (If this is your camera please get in touch. I’ll hold onto the micro SD card so that if the owner does get in touch and wants to send the card to a data recovery specialist they can give it ago.) Which leads me to the …

Pentax 645D – Electronic Level Display

Published by travel67

Press the DISP button on the 645D camera and an Electronic Level Display appears on the rear monitor. It measures the degree of tilt both horizontally and vertically. Green means you’re level on a particular axis, then yellow bars show the level of tilt until you hit red. In the shot above you can see that the camera is angled approximately 3.5 degrees down on the vertical axis (7 yellow bars), and off the scale on the horizontal axis (red). Why is this a great thing to have? If you’d wanted the camera perfectly level when you took the photograph but found you had it angled, you will have to rotate and crop the image. Depending on the degree of tilt, this cropping will result in you having a smaller image to work with, or even losing part of the image. I use a ball head (rather than a pan head) with my tripod which means I will be using this feature a lot when shooting landscapes or cityscapes. I’m not saying all photographs should …

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Published by travel67

Bear seems to have two personalities. One is happy and inquisitive, the other is mad and mildly psychotic. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or in this case Teddy Bear and Grizzly Bear.

Amerikamura Portraits

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Amerikamura or American Village is a small area of Osaka that is home to various funky clothes stores. (There’s also a big shiny Apple store). I decided that before I headed to Kansai Airport I’d see if I could get some shots of Osaka’s young and trendy.

Namba in the Sunshine

Published by travel67

Shops in Japan often have cute animals enticing you to come and eat them. You don’t have to be a vegetarian to think it’s odd that you have cartoon cows munching down on a juicy steak. This stall was selling takoyaki (fried octopus balls). It looks like the cartoon octopus is whistling as he shuffles off to one side and makes his escape. Donkihote is a famous store in Namba named after Don Quixote / Don Quijote. Not sure why it got the name. The inside of the store was surprisingly unimpressive. Cramped and filled with stuff I didn’t want. (Yodobashi Camera or Bic Camera on the other hand…) Not sure what they do in Namba Hips. Best guess is that it is the international headquarters of the Shakira Fan Club.

Namba at Night

Published by travel67

Met up with American model Rachael while in Osaka to try and get some images of a person visiting the city, rather than shots of the locals. Namba really comes alive at night so the plan was to use the neon lights as a background and then illuminate the model with off camera flash. It turns out that the male hosts of Dotomburi were fascinated with what we were doing, so they ended up in the shoot too. And finally a shot of Flickr friend Jan Moren who assisted me on the shoot by holding the off camera flash.

smc PENTAX-D FA645 25mmF4AL[IF] SDM AW

Published by travel67

Pentax has announced that a new super wide lens will arrive in April for the Pentax 645D system. It looks like it will be an amazing piece of equipment. At 25mm it will be the equivalent of a 19.5mm lens on a FF 35mm camera. If mounted on a film 645 camera (or a future full frame 645D) it will be the equivalent of 15.5mm. Similar to the new 55mm it has excellent optics enclosed in a weatherproof body. An interesting thing to note is the built in filter holder behind the large curved front lens. The dial on the left allows you to rotate a circular polarizer while the filter is sealed away inside the lens. This is a great feature, and is something I really like about my huge 67 400mm lens. A few things that may rise a few eyebrows… At 1070 grams this is going to add a fair bit of weight to your camera bag. At around 4000 dollars (￥361,782 at Amazon.co.jp) this is a serious amount of money. It …

Okayama to Osaka

Published by travel67

Took the bullet train from Okayama to Osaka. I’m not a trainspotter, but it’s hard not to be impressed by these trains. The N700 is the latest version of the 700 series train. Max speed is 300 km/h (186 mph) and, due to its ability to tilt, it can take curves in the track at 270 km/h.

Hadaka Matsuri – Chaos

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More and more men pack in to the temple until it resembles a scene from Dante’s Inferno. At 10PM a monk throws two sacred sticks into the writhing mass. Those who can grab a stick and pass it to another monk outside the temple will have a year’s worth of happiness.

Hadaka Matsuri – Purification

Published by travel67

As the men arrive at the temple they wade through a pool of cold water to purify their bodies. For some the cleansing is a painfully cold test of endurance. Others splash and smile, seemingly unaware of the water or air temperature. After this sequence I can confirm that the Pentax 645D and the new 55mm lens are both weather sealed.