Day 4: Kamakura
13th October 2007
27th October 2007 (Saturday) Mean machine at Autocity
Yesterday weather’s was perfect! Not a single sign of haze, rain or just plain old Malaysian misery. (Although it seems to have come back in full force now today morning)
I was one of the official photographer for the event, thanks to AndyTan who knew the organisers so for the first time we don’t have to worry about getting kicked. The event was at autocity on the mainland and would showcase every type of car customization available in the market as well as an event for people to showcase their modify cars.
There was also a beauty pageant which is one of the main events so it’s not all cars. The even last for 2 days so today is the last day with one of the ladies being picked as the best one for the miss mean machine title.
But looking from the weather I’m now a bit reluctant to go unless it stop now so it has enough time to clear up by the start of the event. There are no photos yet and even if I did I’m still facing that flickr problem.
So until then pleasant dreams~!
Problem uploading photos to flickr
For the path 4 days I have been having problems uploading my photos to flickr even though I am using a paid account. I will try again to upload the remaining photos but if once again it fails, I will have to contact flickr on the problem.
I don’t think it’s because they’ve put a cap limit on me as I am using a paid account which gives me unlimited uploads.
Day 3: Tokyo
12th October 2007
After a good night’s sleep, we felt like a million bucks and could take on Tokyo properly. We woke up at about 7am although we had agreed to only go out at 7:30am but I was too excited now to contain my excitement and wanted to make full use of that day.
I had also set myself a challenge that day, I would only use my 17-35 lens on my film building making it truly a wide angle lens (using my 17-35mm on my film body removes the crop factor of digital camera but if you want to know what it was like think of putting a 12mm on Nikon camera and you know what true wide angle mean) and an 85mm or higher zoom on my digital body.
at about 7:45am we set off, the streets were quiet and peaceful. It was at this point CC told me that he would be going to Nagoya for that prefecture’s Matsuri (festival). I decline as I don’t like events with a lot of people. Although in retrospect I should have if I wanted to see actual Japanese culture. I then decided to make a trip to Kamakura if I could see the majority of the places I wanted to go in Tokyo today first.
Here are some shots of the street in Tokyo early morning.
Day 2: In Japan
11th October 2007
We finally set down at Narita airport and had just gone through a lengthy immigration line. Though the wait was made incredibly longer due to the fact I had checked in luggage while CC didn’t.
CC went on ahead while I waited for the conveyor belt to spit out my trolley bag. In retrospect I’m glad I did bring it since I bought a lot of stuff on the day before I came back from Japan and would have died if I had to carry it.
Day 1: Getting to Japan……. (post mortem report)
10th of October 2007
So I got up early that morning at about 4am to go over all my packing details again as I had called the taxi to come pick me up at 5:30am. Since this was an international flight I needed to check in 2 hours before hand.
After going all my details for the 50th time, it was time to get going. The taxi was waiting for me as expected and drove me down to the airport. It was a good thing I did come early as planned as the crowds and line were huge and long. I managed to check in with about an hour and a half to spare. I decided to sit down at the nando’s stand which is next to the departure hall and wait for my friend CC.
Here are some shots of the airport that day.
I gave CC a call telling him he may want to come earlier then expected due to the huge crowd returning home for the coming raya next week. He was already on his way so no worries there.
Nikon F4s MB-20
This is actually a following to my previous gear review for the F4s which you can find here.
I’m back~~~~~ ^_^
I’m finally back from Japan which was a wonderful place! Even though there were days that didn’t go so well, I would go back there in a heart beat if I have the money.
I have about 20++ gigabyte worth of photos which I have been uploading up onto flickr since I came back and I’m barely a quarter way done. Once I’m done I’ll begin giving a day by day review of the places I’ve been to along with photos.
I should really do this more often. It really helps me to loose tons of stress.
So until then pleasant dreams!
A short update in Japan
I apologize to my family and to my friends for the lack of updates but for the past 3 days,I have been unable to access the Internet simply because I could not a singlecyber cafe in Tokyo!
Its amazing! Everyone one here has their own computer (AKA parsocom) and as a result there is little to no demand for a cybercafe.I do now regret not having brought my own notebook computer along with me but I do believe the weight would have killed me.
I’m now in Kyoto and they have their own Internet corner which nows allow me access to the Internet.Though I don’t think I can upload anything.But I’ll try and then add another blog entry then.
So until then, pleasant dreams!
I’m right now in Bangkok international airport.
Operation Aki ~ of Maple leafs
I’ll be traveling Japan on the 10th of October till the 22nd. This trip was actually on a spur of the moment when my friend CrossChannel asked if I wanted to check out a trip to Japan during the matta fair back in June. We managed to get a pretty good deal, and we got the tickets a few days later so it wasn’t a scam as I thought.
At the time I had thought my USA business was still a green light but after making the booking for Japan (I was worried about how I was going to afford the trip as I would be blowing a lot of money for my USA trip) I think about 2 weeks later I was told that the USA business trip was canceled due to cost cutting, 4 days before the actual trip…..bummer.
Nikon F4s
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AKA the camera you want to have when you’re in a war zone and you don’t have anything to use as body armor!
I managed to snag this weapon for what I think was a good price. Hopefully I don’t ever find out if it more than it was worth.
I have been using this cam for a week or 2 already and I tell you this, the matrix metering is only so-so. So do not expect matrix metering like those found on today’s DSLR. This I believe is actually the prototype for matrix metering. Although it can be used with ais lens.
Aside from this, this is also the last Nikkor that offered a 100% viewfinder, subsequent models started to reduce the viewfinder percentage with the F5 model.
This also consider the final fusion of electronic components along with manual knobs and control before they went all electronic with F5.
Why I got this? Well after I started using fm2n, I heard many good things about this, so I took the plunge and got this. I didn’t when another deal would come by this good.
Here is my first observation about the Nikon F4″S”
- Controls are good and durable
- It’s heavy
- Body is tough like nails!
- It’s heavy
- Focus speed is slow but good.
- Matrix metering seems a bit whacked which I can conclude as it’s the first one used by Nikon, it seems to be stingy on the shutter speed. I usually shoot at anything above 1/60 and open the aperture further if I need more light but with any of the program modes or aperture mode, the camera seems to rather risk getting a blur picture rather then a sharp one which is a bit underexposed.
- Good points, the design is REALLY modular, if I could find the parts I can actually swap out a lot of the components to suit my needs. Say viewfinder, battery system can be also swapped out (with either more power, bigger size or less power smaller size).
- Did I mentioned that it’s heavy? It’s sooo heavy in it’s default F4s form. My Fujifilm s5 pro with the MB-200 using alkaline batteries with my Nikkor 17-35mm mounted would be lighter then it! >_<
Note there is a solution to the weight problem, by getting the MB-20 attachment (the Nikon F4s is equipped with the MB-21, replacing this battery grip with the MB-20, converts the Nikon F4s to the Nikon F4, they should have done that in the first place and instead made the MB-20 an optional purchase!) which dramatically reduces the size as well as the weight of the camera. Although it shorten battery life as there would only be 4 batteries instead of 6 then, but hell that thing is heavy!
Aside from the weight, this camera has enough good points to make it a worth while purchase if you can get at a price and condition you like. I’ll update later with some photos once I get them back from the lab.
I’ll have to hand it to Nikon for one thing though, they really looked forward in their design, while the focus speed on this camera won’t break any records for speed and sound but Nikon had actually included the connections that would allow an AFS lens to be mounted and use it!
I tried it with a Nikkor 70-200mm VR/Nikkor 17-35 AF-S as well as a Sigma 70-200mm HSM and they all work perfectly! Even though AF-S/HSM lens only became available a few years later after the Nikon F4s was released! The only thing that does not work is VR, I confirmed this with the Nikkor 70-200mm VR lens. So what do I have here? A camera that works with a huge catalog of lens except no VR
Though for G lens, you can only use program mode and shutter mode as there is no way to manipulate the aperture without an aperture ring.
If you want an even more extensive detail article on this camera, take a look here and an FAQ here
Wow! Two post in one day, I must be damn bored at work! Anyway, pleasant dream!
Nikkor 50mm F/1.8 D
One of my best lens and has always been part of my arsenal of lenses. It’s consider the cheapest lens in whole Nikkor line (when bought new of course). It’s priced at about USD100 (some places can even offer less if you know where to look).
Originally the 50mm was used as the default focal lens for old film cameras as it supposedly mimics the human eye (I disagree, the human eye is wider then this Update: Shortly after making this post, a friend informed me it does match the human eye but only for film and for ONE human eye, not both which would indeed make the human vision wider then 50mm. Thanks les!!) but on this digital, this lens goes to about 75mm which is still consider a fantastic focal length lens especially for portraits.
Unfortunately many assume that simply using this lens would give them good photos, WRONG! This lens is nothing more then a tool and only when used correctly can it HELP you get the pics, not create them.
Nikon AF-S 17-35 f/2.8D aka, "how to make my wallet lose weight"
What can I say? this lens is fantastic! While it cost me a bundle and half of my soul but damn worth it!
I originally had a Tamron A16 and a Tamron SP90 but recently I decide to bite the bullet and sell off those 2 to help me finance my purchase of this legendary gold ring lens.
I managed to get it at RM4,900 brand new from Japan while shops were selling it at RM5,900 and even the online shop I bought it from has increased the price to RM5,100. I had purchase this lens before everyone started to buy it in anticipation of the new Nikon D3.
The benefit of this lens over Nikon 17-55mm is that is a full frame lens and can be used on both film and digital sensor (after digital crop factor of 1.5x).
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