
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/320 sec, f/10, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Basin Above the Garden
at the Toji-in Temple (等持院), Kyoto Japan
I had a fun outing this morning on a temple tour led by Joshua Levine, who wanted to lead a test tour in preparation for offering tours by bicycle as part of his “cycle cafe” NORU, scheduled to open near the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine at the end of the month.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 26mm — 1/320 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
First Stop
Hirano Shrine (平野神社)
Unlike the cafe whose target demographic is cyclists, the tours merely use bicycle as a means to move around freely, so they're cute highly-adjustable easy-to-ride little bikes. Riders ranged from 153cm to 192cm (5'0 ~ 6'2) and we all had a great fit. The bikes were surprisingly easy to ride.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 31mm — 1/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Compact Parking

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Always Impressive
with how many tourists can be crammed into the Golden Pavilion

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kumiko · Joshua · Sara · Dino · Manseki
The test subjects consisted of some cycling friends (Kumiko, Manseki, Michael who had to leave before this photo was taken, and me), and two non-cycling acquaintances of Joshua visiting from Switzerland, Sara and Dino. They fit the demographic for this kind of tour, and if their reaction is any indication, it will be a great success.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Running Commentary

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sort of Freaky View
of the top of the Golden Pavilion (金閣寺) poking above the trees

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 45mm — 1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Off to the Next Spot
taken while moving at 16 kph (10 mph)
The next stop was the Ryouanji Temple...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Garden-Viewing Room
Ryouanji Temple (龍安寺)
(The sort of yellowish-green tone to the back room screams “fluorescent-light white-balance problem” to my gut, but it was actually that way in real life, green flooding in from the overhanging trees out the door seen in the background.)
The temple's grounds are gorgeous in the autumn, gorgeous in the spring, really just quite nice any time. But it's most famous for its Zen rock garden. It seems that I've never posted specifically about it, which I find hard to believe, but all I can find are one-off pictures of it, here, here, and here. Perhaps it's telling that all three are provided as desktop backgrounds.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Off to the Next Spot
taken while moving at 8 kph (5 mph)

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bicycle Parking
Toji-in Temple
The next spot, the Toji-in Temple (等持院), was new to me and by far the highlight of the trip. Unlike the Golden Pavilion which was mad-house crowded, and Ryouanji which was normal crowded, Toji-in was almost empty, yet the garden was prettier than both.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos
More Running Commentary

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Enjoying the Garden

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 58mm — 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Enjoying Tea

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 32mm — 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 140 — map & image data — nearby photos
Enjoying Each Other

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 40mm — 1/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tea House Above the Garden
It as brilliantly sunny, which makes it difficult to get shots that don't feel washed out. I had my polarizer filter (which makes a huge difference) and so it helped, but with many of these shots I had to be sufficiently aggressive with post processing that they start to edge toward an HDRish feel (what I call single-shot HDR). I don't care for HDR, but it's a “lesser of two evils” situation.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/16, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kitchen Roof
pointing out that the littlest rooflet sticking up would be above the kitchen
The shot that leads this post was created with Lightroom 6's new HDR photomerge feature, combining seven shots that I created in rapidfire with a bracketed-exposure burst (handheld). I just selected them, invoked “Photo > Photo Merge > HDR” and let it do it. It corrected for the slight movement among the shots, and came up with a great result without any further input from me.
On the other hand, the next two highly-similar shots are of the aforementioned “single-shot HDR” variety...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 26mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wood and Bamboo
corner of the tea-house veranda floor

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/8, ISO 140 — map & image data — nearby photos
Private Garden
It seesms that the guy in the room at right was the only other person there at the time

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hallway
Another two-methods pair, one from a single frame and one combined from multiple frames...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Room All To Themselves

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Not Quite Alone
The tour continued on to other places, but I had to bow out early for a prior commitment, so this is where the story ended for me.