Life in Japan - Pictures galore !! Arcades, Temples, Rainy days, etc

You're right about Ansel Adams. I suppose I just meant there are loads of people out there buying a Canon 5dmkiii and take absolutely terrible photos. But it's all subjective anyway! I'm not a pixel peeper, but the 24MP sensor on the NEX-7 is handy crop-wise. The NEX-7 has an electronic view finder, which is nice. I'd still recommend the EOS-M for you.... we can take this discussion offline though

I don't think I'd be teaching you much at all - I've been a fan of your photos for years now.

 

As someone who is a real newbie and still learning at photography/DSLRs and traveling to Japan soon with my wife, can anyone recommend any good resources I can read up on to start taking better photos? I still feel a bit daft when using the manual settings, but I've finally started using RAW and am blown away by how much control you have over everything and how well it can correct the auto results I normally get from a camera We've only got a 18-55mm kit lens on a 550D, so nothing high-end or anything, but we're really happy with it compared to the compacts we've used in the past.

In the past I've found that night shots in particular have been tricky, but I haven't done much urban photography at night so I guess Japan's as good a place as any to learn on the fly

Seeing the amazing shots by the Assembler members is inspiring and intimidating at the same time!!

 

Jesus Christ, Japan...

TEPCO couldn’t get battery during Fukushima meltdown; went to hardware store the next day

and right around the corner from me posting this right now...

86-year-old ex-cop found dead in house after killing woman with sword

 

Daily facepalms, living here.

MangledLeg: Go crazy with Google, and actually use your camera. Set it to manaul, and do a bunch of series. Look at what happens when you change settings. Here's a few exercises.

-Set your camera in A mode (aperture priority) and a normal ISO. Start at F8 or something and go down to as low as the lens goes. Make sure it's the same shot.
-Keep it in A mode and do a similar test with moving target(s), but leave the aperture and change the ISO
-Do something similar in full manual, changing only the shutter.

After you look at a series of samples of the minute (and not minute) differences you will get what's going on.

I find aperture priority mode the most usable. I generally know the depth of field and ISO I want, but the shutter speed changes constantly.

 

There's more to that police story than some news programs mentioned. Basically the woman was a complete bitch. You can find more about her on the news tonight I expect. Still, the ex-police officer can't be forgiven for what he did. Probably why he took his own life.

 

Yeah, I watched it all on the news last night. They'd been bickering for years. Bitch or not, I don't think his actions were exactly ideal. Total nutter!

Having said that, it's two fewer people to shave off the inverted pyramid demographic distaster that is Japan:

 

Man, that doesn't look good. I'm glad I have a British pension as well as the Japanese one. The funny thing is that the Japanese say you can't have a British pension while the British said it's perfectly fine, just don't tell the Japanese Same thing when I asked about dual nationality for my son after the age of 20. Japan said no, UK said sure, no problem. Just don't tell the Japanese, hahaha. Ah, the UK has it's problems but still makes me laugh at times.

 

I'm not putting anything into a British Pension scheme, purely on the guesswork that the whole British economy will collapse and there won't be anything left for us when we're that old. I'm putting money away into various other places, and will manage it all myself. At least I can claim back a large percentage of my Japanese pension when I leave here. I'm paying into one right now, and won't be using that money here when I am 60+ (if I make it).

 

You should be able to legally pay into a single pension and then receive either of them. That's assuming your backwards country has a social plan setup like they have w/ the US, which I assume they have. You can try to collect both, but that is fraud (if you get caught). The ultimate would be your son collecting both of your pensions after you die.

 

Yep.

Yep.

At least last year, there was a flow out to the rural areas, but you can blame this on the tsunami, and could have been a blip. Tokyo real-estate is a tricky beast, and it doesn't always make sense. Tokyo (still) has some of the highest land prices in the free world. Drive 50 miles outside of the city and it's free. :|

My personal opinion is they need to keep the inheritance tax in check, or severely devalue land prices. Pretty sure the exclusion is only 40 million yen on the entire estate. You can maybe buy a closet and a toilet for that price in Tokyo. The result is land being owned for generations being sold off, sometimes in fire sales.

 

I lived in Manchester for 8 years, and there was a huge housing boom during 2000-2006... and a huge number of apartment buildings were finished, and people were making money, hand over fist. However, in 2008, the economic crisis sent everything (literally) south, and the newly finished buildings had no tenants. There are entire districts with just a few people living in massive apartment buildings.

Well, many people have changed their ideals since the 80s crashes, but then it's swung back again.

TBH, God knows what the world will be like in 5-10 years, let alone 30.

.... anyway, I need to get out and take some more photos

 

I'm mainly of your school of thought, Assembler. There's a lot of ways it can play out, and I hate being a pessimist, but I've been exposed to Japanese group mentality for most of my adult life. I'm a realist.

I have not figured out how it works financially, but the current trend in the central area of Tokyo, is if you have a house you don't want, you lease the space to a parking lot. They will tear it down, and you get a cut... or they get a cut. Not sure. Can't tell you how many old houses (yes, houses, not offices) have been turned into 3-car parking lots. While no other Japanese city has the population Tokyo has, the central areas (including the nearby residential areas) of all of them are crowded, and could always use more parking.

 

After hours in Tokyo

Cheers!

 

Wibble Wobble

 

Yeah, that kinda sucked.

You should submit some of your photos here, Martin.
http://metropolis.co.jp/features/photo-of-the-day/

Hey -- look at beauty for today.

 

Some lovely shots in that link, GP.

I've just hacked the firmware on my GF2. Finally I have it in English which will make life much easier for quick sets ups plus I've boosted the video capabilities and auto focus speed. I'm just off out to shoot a video in the dark to see how much noise reduction I've gained.