A surprisingly informative cartoon explaining the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation to Japanese children.

Latest Update: Things up in Tokyo seem to be even more stressful than normal. Worries about possible radiation or possible panic, along with rolling electrical blackouts mean than some are heading out of the city to stay with relatives in other parts of Japan. One friend commented that the ice cream at the convenience stores was on sale, I guess the refrigerators don’t have backup generators.  I imagine that later tonight there will be some people  sitting around eating Häagen–Dazs in the dark. I heard on the news that they had found several thousand people who were thought to be missing. Wonderful news, but many others will be still be spending a night out in the cold with limited food and water. I’ll end with a snap of an Okinawan lizard I saw at Cape Teniya near Higashi Village. No idea of the species. It had a brown/black body with a vivid orange underside. Didn’t have a macro lens with me,  this is as close as I could go with the 55mm wide angle.     …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Things have been a little hectic the last few weeks. Just got back from a weekend up on the mainland. Saturday night was the Hadaka Matsuri in Okayama. (You can read more about the city in  The Best of Okayama. ) Hadaka Matsuri or Naked Man Festival  is one of Japan’s most unusual festivals. It will culminate with a brawl between about 9000 almost naked men. At the start of the evening, things are more subdued. Locals light candles and say their prayers as they await the chaos. Inside Saidai-ji Temple the monks begin to chant. The smoke from incense burners hangs in the air. A lone man stands at the temple. It’s close to freezing outside, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He won’t be alone for long…

Spent a couple of hours on Saturday with fellow photographer Luna testing out colored gels. I have a feeling that this blue back lighting is pretty standard in the laboratory scenes of C.S.I. Las Vegas. (I think they also tend to put a green or yellow gel on the main light.) The above image was desaturated slightly in Photoshop.