Before we get onto the mayhem of the Kishiwada Danjiri Festival I thought I’d post a mellow “postcard” image of Kishiwada Castle.

The Gate Tower Building in Osaka. A fine example of what happens when you can’t decide whether you should build an expressway to the left or to the right of an office block. I believe the road does not actually make contact with the building but squeezes through the hole. Odd, very odd.

I happened to spot this scene from my hotel window. It says so much about life in modern Japan. Concrete and steel fill the scene, but a small patch of greenery and spirituality remains. Not sure if this image is tragic or uplifting.

Umeda Sky Building is one of my favorite examples of exciting modern architecture. Hopefully from these shots you can see why the night image in the previous post (no matter how detailed) doesn’t really do justice to the building. These were both shot with the 645 35mm lens, an extremely impressive piece of glass.

I’d received several requests to see images taken with the Pentax 645D in low light conditions. (You can check out my Traveling Photographer article about shooting in low light here) On my latest trip to Osaka I hoped to get a night shot of the Umeda Sky Tower. I chose the hotel and then the room (on one of the upper floors facing North) so that I had a chance at a good shot. As with other best laid plans (and I’m sure many mice will agree with me) things didn’t quite work out. Although I had a good view of the building the angle meant that I couldn’t look through the gap between the two vertical towers. I still took the shot as I realized that this was exactly the kind of long exposure night shot that some photographers had been interested in seeing. So here’s the photo. Taken on a tripod at ISO 200 f11 30 seconds with the 105mm lens from the Pentax 67 camera. I have also put the full size …

The British Journal of Photography has reported that the Pentax 645D will go on sale in Europe in December. The list price in the UK is stated to be £9,000 for the body or £10,000 with the new 55mm lens. I am really pleased that Pentax has decided to release the camera to a wider market. I’ve been really impressed with the 645D, and I am sure there are many people in Europe who are eagerly awaiting its arrival. A larger number of users will hopefully mean that Pentax will continue to develop the system with more lenses. It will also be nice to have an English manual available! For those outside of Europe and Japan, the wait continues. I know this will frustrate many but I am sure that this photographic Godzilla will one day reach your shores.