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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pure Concentration
Looking at dozens of cameras a few feet away, but not seeing a single one of them

As I mentioned in yesterday's “Traditional Archery Like a Boss” post, I made my first visit to the annual tooshiya archery event (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) at the Sanjusangendo Temple in Kyoto, a half-hour walk from my place.

Japanese archery, kyuudou, is a discipline — neither purely sport nor art — comparable in one sense to karate or tea ceremony in that the result is not nearly as important as the perfection in the steps taken toward the result. Yesterday's event was my first introduction to it (the only other archery I've seen in Japan is the yabusame mounted archery event I witnessed a couple of years ago), but it was immediately apparent that the event was a big deal to those who participated.

The age of adulthood in Japan is 20, and last week was the national holiday to celebrate those who became legal adults in the past year (as seen in my “Japan's Coming of Age Day Holiday Spectacle” post a while back). The rites of passage continued yesterday for the small slice of Japan's new adults who have achieved a high-enough rank in the practice of archery to have earned the privilege: they may shoot/perform two arrows outside the west veranda of the Sanjusangendo Temple. It's a very big deal.

Yesterday, about 2,200 new adults from around Japan got the chance.

It was an absolute mad-house of an event, but for the short moment when an archer was on the shooting platform, nothing else existed for them but the bow, arrow, and target. Twelve archers were in position and shooting at any one time, but the shooting platform was absolutely silent except for the twang of the string when an arrow was shot, and the very occasional clatter of a dropped bow.

This next sequence of one young man, in the position on the shooting platform the closest to me and the Tokyo-subway-at-rush-hour crowd, perhaps conveys a bit what this event means to these archery practitioners....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Calmly Set the First Arrow
Slowly and carefully. This takes 15 seconds.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Temporarily Shift Second Arrow
while retreating further into the depths of concentration
(the second arrow will end up held out of the way by the pinkie of the gloved hand)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Prepare To Assume Firing Stance

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 86mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Initial Draw
every little motion a study in purpose

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Raise To Final Aim
this position is held at length

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dispassionate and Motionless
Survey of the Result

There is no movement of the archer when the arrow is released, except for the fingers doing the release and then that hand snapping straight back in recoil, leaving their arms spread wide. Their body, legs, other hand, head, and gaze remain utterly motionless, and there is no sound save the twang of the bow.

The sight of the arrow in flight for 60m toward the 100cm target is breathtaking in a way I would not have imagined, nor can I explain.

It's impossible to discern from his reaction whether he even came close, much less hit the target, because there is no reaction. At all.

A couple of days before the event it was explained to me by the staff at my favorite Japanese restaurant that it's all in the execution and that it's irrelevant whether the target is hit, but that's not entirely accurate: after the 1,110+ men had gone, they announced the few dozen who had hit the target.

However, it's telling that announcement consisted of, for each archer, their shooting number (everyone had a number like in a marathon), their city and school, and the name of their instructor. Notably absent was the name of the archer himself.

Back to our archer, #720....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Collect Your Thoughts
for the second arrow

It's at this point that he looked straight at me, though it was obvious that he didn't even see me, and I got the shot that opens this post. I was part of a massive dozens-deep scrum of observers, many with step ladders and most all with cameras, but the archer was alone in his own world.

Finally...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Start The Second Arrow

He started the second arrow, but stopped and reset...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Regroup
really pull in the concentration

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Be The Target

He then loaded his second arrow...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Too Late To Turn Back Now

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
True

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 175mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Final Moment
tension is tighter than in the string of his bow, yet wrapped in calm

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 175mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Away

It's hard to see, but in that last shot a light dust hangs where the arrow brushed against the bow on its way out.

He again holds that pose for a good long while, then very slowly collects himself, bows, and steps back in his return to reality, making way for the next wave of archers.

I have no idea whether he hit with either arrow.

Continued here...

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Like a Boss
Staring Down His Opponent
( a small target 70 or so meters away )

I went to the tooshiya archery event for the first time, held annually at the Sanjusangendo Temple in Kyoto today. The official name of the event is 「第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会」. Mostly it's for ranked archers who have turned 20 years old this past year (and there were 2,132 that took part today), but this was one of a couple dozen instructors who got to shoot, and who ended up placing.

Having hauled a massive lens around all day, I got home to find that I was more exhausted than I ever recall. After an hour's power nap and a hot bath, I've just enough energy for one photo. More certainly to come.

Continued here...

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Tale of Three Tracklogs
on a three-hour stroll in Kyoto, Japan

In the comments of a recent post about GPS receivers, it was suggested that the GPS receiver in the iPhone was useful for keeping tracklogs. I had bad experiences with iPhone location services when I tested in 2009, but perhaps my test wasn't good, or perhaps the old iPhone 3 wasn't good, so I thought I'd give it another try.

So, the other day I took three GPS receivers with me while I did some errands. As I'm apt to do lately, I walked.

This post is a comparison of the resulting tracklogs.

Coming and Going
Garmin eTrex Legend HCx  ·  Garmin eTrex 20  ·  black is iPhone 4s

The three devices I took along on my unscientific test:

1. Garmin eTrex Legend HCx that I bought in 2007. It supports GPS with WAAS for increased accuracy. It has a slate-blue outer shell, so its tracklog gets a blue line on the plot.

2. Garmin eTrex 20 that I bought in Fall 2011 (product page at Garmin). Garmin has adjusted the hardware/software to make it even more troublesome to use than its predecessor, which is quite a feat, but on the plus side it not only contains a GPS/WAAS receiver, but also a GLONASS receiver, to tap in to Russia's own independent version of America's GPS. The theory is that more satellites in the sky means more satellites likely visible to the unit in any situation, and so better accuracy. I got the orange one, so its tracklog's plot is orange.

3. iPhone 4s with the MotionX GPS app. This is a GPS (update: and GLONASS!) receiver, likely(?) without WAAS. My iPhone is black, so its tracklog gets a black line.

The results from the iPhone was much better than I expected, and the others were worse than I expected. In the short plot segment above, which shows both the start and end of my walk, the iPhone is the closest to where I actually walked, including crossing the street toward the top of the image.

Garmin eTrex 20 is best along here
I walked along the north side of the street

All-Around Fail

iPhone Least Bad of the Three

The place I'd planned to lunch was closed, so I wandered around until I found a place, at the center red dot in the next plot:

Lunch

While there, I sat about two yards from a floor-ceiling window, and the two Garmin units reported accuracy as good as 10 meters, but the scatterplot above shows that they had no clue.

The more modern eTrex 20 perhaps had a better clue, because while in the restaurant it generally reported less accuracy than the older eTrex Legend HCx:

±16m     ±10m
both wrong, but the eTrex 20 less so

Again the Legend HCx is off

Pause

I spent a few minutes inside a building where I had poor-to-no reception, but instead of realizing the lack of reception and pausing the tracklog, the Legend HCx gave incorrect readings scattered across a span of 310 meters. The iPhone mostly realized that it had no signal, and its scatter was limited to 80 meters. The eTrex 20's scatter was about 60 meters.

For while the Legend HCx just drifted off, at one point more than 200m off, as illustrated by the outward bow in the blue line at the left of the overall plot, which I'll repeat here:

Legend HCx Going Crazy

I've never seen it show a suspected accuracy that bad, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was showing its normal accuracy of 3m-10m while it was actually off by 200m, but unfortunately I wasn't looking at it while walking, so I don't know what it thought its accuracy was.

Pedestrian Overpass

In the plot above, I crossed the street from north to south, then doubled back a bit on the pedestrian overpass (just to the left of center), to check out the view from above the street. Again, the iPhone seems the most accurate here, though the eTrex 20 at least makes it look like I used the crosswalk.

Not Too Bad Down This Stretch
but again, the iPhone is best

Cutting Corners
again the iPhone is best

Leaving Yodobashi Camera
it all looks crazy, but the iPhone plot is by far the best

More iPhone Bestness
I walked along the south side of the street

Heading Down to the River
eTrex 20 seems best

Walking Under a Bridge

The iPhone track looks best, but in this case it might be a side effect of laying down a plot point less often. The two Garmin units were set to log locations every second, but the app I used on the iPhone seems to have logged a location every six or seven seconds, which is just about the time it took to pass under the bridge.

Pretty Tight
the iPhone's less frequent updates smooths out the jaggies

Just Crazy
iPhone wins again

Shopping

I don't know how far I actually walked, but I can tell you what each tracklog tells me about my three-hour stroll:

• The iPhone 4s tracklog contains 1,163 data points, and the distances add up to 11.8km.

• The eTrex 20 tracklog contains 9,973 data points, and the distances add up to 12km.

• The eTrex Legend HCx tracklog contains 10,428 data points, and the distances add up to 13.8km.

Remember, the older eTrex Legend HCx kept reporting a location even when it should have realized it had no idea where it was, jumping all over the place while I was in a building, and all that jumping added up to more “distance” and more data points. The other units were smarter in that they knew better when the accuracy was not good enough to count on.

Both Garmin units were powered on for the same amount of time and had the same 1-second logging frequency, so they should in theory contain the same number of data points, but the eTrex 20 recorded 455 fewer, representing seven and a half minutes where it choose to not record a location (because I was inside and it didn't have a good signal) while the Legend HCx continued recording its incorrect location.

Elevation

Due to the nature of its design, the GPS system is not as accurate with altitude as with latitude and longitude, and on some Garmin units this is exacerbated with a worthless barometric barometer. I've learned to avoid those, so none of my units now have that, so the altitude in today's three plots is all from GPS (or, in the case of the eTrex 20 (and the iPhone!), both GPS and GLONASS).

It's almost comical how random it seems. Here are the elevation plots from each tracklog, along with an extra one for the elevation that Google Earth has on file:

Google Earth

Garmin eTrex 20 (GPS + GLONASS, 2011)

Garmin eTrex HCx (GPS, circa 2007)

iPhone 4s (GPS, circa 2011)

The Google Earth data seems closest to reality, except for the odd hump in the center (Google thinks there's a hill just north of Kyoto Station). The elevation in Kyoto slopes down from the north, and you can see in the Google Earth plot that I'm mostly level as I walk east to west, then slopes down as I approach Kyoto Station, then at the end climbs steadily as I walk north along the river.

The other plots are just ridiculous. (According to the eTrex 20, at one point I was at 225m elevation, and according to the Legend HCx I was at one point walking 0.68 mach!)

In the end, I'm dismayed at how bad my old Legend HCx was, and how not-much-better the eTrex 20 is, especially for having twice satellites available to it.

But most of all I'm shocked at how good the iPhone 4s results are... even judging from this one simple test, it's clearly good enough in outdoor use for geoencoding photos.

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I came across this great spoof video today: Fotoshop by Adobé by Jesse Rosten.

I've never understood how it can be legal for a cosmetic company to digitally alter a photo in an advertisement to create the kind of result they claim their product is supposed to create (smooth skin, etc.). It seems to be a cut and dried case of false advertising to me, but apparently there's something else going on because it's been going on unabated for years. I'm so used to altering my own photographs (such as this one from yesterday) that I can see the digital manipulation in these kinds of advertisements a mile away, but from what I can tell, most people don't realize just how unrealistic these photos are.

Jesse's video should be required viewing, especially for young girls, to give them a realistic mindset in preparation for the barrage of unrealistic, unattainable “beauty” fakeness that society will envelop them in and pressure them with.

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
This Way
Stéphane Barbery leads us to new Kyoto discoveries

Vertical Desktop-Background Versions
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After what's turned out to be a monochromatic year so far, I'm happy to get some color back in my blog. The fall-foliage season is Kyoto's most glorious, and it runs a long six or seven weeks, so I've got more fodder for posts than I could actually process, so I'll dip in for today's post about a stroll around Kyoto's Mt. Yoshida that I did with some friends (Stéphane Barbery, Nicolas Joannin, and Paul Barr) last month.

I've posted about this area many times, starting in “Discovering Kyoto's Mt. Yoshida” several years ago after Stéphane first introduced the area to me. We both live within walking distance, but I'd not even known about it until he showed me, and on our visit last month Stéphane again revealed new and amazing areas I'd not know about. Stéphane is a wonderful person to lead these kinds of exploratory strolls because he knows what's amazing but merely leads you there, letting each area speak for itself.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Vibrantly Backlit
enveloped in a moody dark surroundings

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Mt. Yoshida may be small, but it is a mountain, so there are lots of steps...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Somehow Disconcerting
I think Paul and Stéphane had stopped and turned to wait for me

That shot reminds me of the shot of Paul walking in mud last summer.

Mt. Yoshida is not tall, but it gets you above the city so it's always offering nice views of the area...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Typical Kyoto
mountains, pagoda, utility wires, houses, temple, TV antennas, nature

The pagoda is of the Shinnyodou Temple as seen here, and the large roof in the background is part of the Konkai Koumyou Temple (also called the Kurodani Temple).

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Mountain-Top Shrine Path
Takenaka Inari Shrine

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Construction Detail

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I like how you can see the joints between the stones.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Catching Up
Nicolas and his smile catching up faster than I can focus

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Picture of a Leaf

Desktop-Background Versions
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E-P2 + 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 28mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5.1, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Taking a Picture of a Leaf
with a squished nose
photo by Nicolas Joannin

E-P2 + 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 19mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Watching Me Take a Picture of a Leaf
“why is that guy lying in the middle of the path?”
photo by Nicolas Joannin

I spent quite a while trying to get a shot of the leaf, mostly because I had to wait for the few moments when the sun popped out and backlit that one leaf sticking up.

In the end the results were not as good as I hoped, but I'll share a couple more versions of the same view, one with a larger field in focus, and one with the focus on the further point of the leaf...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

I often take all kinds of different versions of the same scene while exploring the possibilities, but I don't often share more than one because one of the most important skills a photographer can have is shot selection: knowing what not to share. (Considering that I posted 2,133 photos on my blog in 2011, it's a skill I don't quite have, but then again, I'm a writer, not a photographer.)

E-P2 + 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 45mm — ¹/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
photo by Nicolas Joannin

This next shot doesn't look like much within the confines of this post, but it's a kind of shot I like as a desktop-background picture. Most of the photo is out of focus, but the top part that is in focus is apparent in the larger version, and somehow it all just feels nice...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

Vertical Desktop-Background Versions
1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Alive

I was able to suppress the desire to sub-caption that one with “(for the time being)” because there's something really vibrant and alive about this one. It's the result of my processing in Lightroom... the original, seen below for reference, is decidedly bland.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
( bland original )

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pleasant Mood

E-P2 + 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 17mm — ¹/640 sec, f/4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Quite the View
photo by Nicolas Joannin

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kyoto to Osaka
Museum of Art, Heian Shrine gate, Kyoto Tower, Osaka Skyline