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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/3000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Me
in the only photo of me that I actually like
Photo by Stéphane Barbery, from his Flickr stream
So, as evidenced by “Street Photography (Sort of) In Roppongi Hills“ and its followups (parts two and three), I got a new lens last week. Some have asked to see a photo of me with it, so it's fortuitous that Kyoto friend Stéphane Barbery (he of the oft-different artistic sense and some killer Festival of the Ages shots, among much other) actually got a photo of me where I don't think I look horrible. He had been laughing at me for using the new lens, a circa 1983 Nikon 300mm f/2 (“Nikkor ED 300mm f/2 IF”), without a tripod, and I guess I was laughing back.
Normally I'm pretty pathetic in photos, which is why I prefer to be behind the camera.
The next day, Zak Braverman (of Shakuhachi bamboo flute and Gen's daddiness fame) took a shot of me where I had hoped to come across relaxed, with the lens cradled in my arm for loving safety, but instead I look like... I dunno... spaced out.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Out to Lunch?
Photo by Zak Braverman
stupid look by me
But that's not the worst of it. After picking up the lens, I had my camera bag, a monopod that I didn't use much, a pouch with my wallet, iPad, etc., and the big heavy case for the lens, all in addition to the lens. It was so much to lug around that I was tempted to just head home, but I don't get to Tokyo much, so didn't want to waste the opportunity, so lugged it all around as I wandered the Roppongi area of Tokyo.
I felt ridiculous and self-conscious enough with the big lens, but lugging all that stuff around as well, strapped in various kludgy ways to my body.... wow, I had to just jettison all sense of shame and embarrassment. And it turns out my feelings were justified, as I see in some pics that the lady of this couple took, and the guy then sent to me...
PENTAX Optio I-10 — 1/250 sec, f/3.5, ISO 80 — map & image data — nearby photos
Behind Tokyo Midtown
trying to stand such that the big silver lens case is hidden behind me
Photo by Nice Lady in Tokyo
PENTAX Optio I-10 — 1/640 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lens In Action
Photo by Nice Lady in Tokyo
Let me repay each of these kind folks for snapping my picture by offering one of each of them actually taken with the lens....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1600 sec, f/2, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Photogenic Couple in Tokyo
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/80 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Zak Braverman
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/3200 sec, f/2, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stéphane Barbery
I processed Stéphane's photo in what I think his style might look like.
And for completeness, here's the photo I took moments after Stéphane took the photo that leads this post, in what turns out to be a boring picture of a fisherman with a very long fishing rod that you can't quite see...
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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cold
This weekend I had great adventure in a visit to a Japanese swordsmith, about which I'll write soon. One side event was that the swordsmith, who normally works with 1,000-degree metals, was also visited at the same time by a cold-forging metal smith, and the two traded notes and techniques of their vaguely-related crafts.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pewter Blanks
about the diameter of a US quarter
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Progress So Far
after a lot of hammering
The swordsmith is used to hammering, but not to touching what he's hammering with his bare hands (because it's normally glowing red hot).
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Smoothing Some Ridges
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Taking a Break
An hour and a half later....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Rough Shaping Begins
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Working the Edge
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Inspection by the Master
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Heh, This is Harder Than it Looks”
( I don't recall what he was really saying, but that's what I see in his smile )
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
A Little More Instruction
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
More-Refined Shaping?
This is, of course, the answer to the “What am I?” Quiz that will stump you from the other day.
Most of the products that the metalworker makes would not fit directly into any of these curves, so I'm not 100% sure on what they're for, other than some level of shaping. It's interesting to note that they're not used for the basic shape, but rather, that's done by many light taps at the edge of the wood.
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Michael Lambe over at Deep Kyoto posts about a Benefit Sale for Tohoku Disaster Relief on May 28th, in the Demachiyanagi area of Kyoto. If you'll be in Kyoto then and have interest in either helping towards the disaster relief, or picking up some deals garage-sale style, check out his post for more info.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1000 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Observation Platform
of Kyoto Tower, across the street
This post follows parts one and two, of some pseudo street photography with the Nikkor 300mm f/2 lens. I used a monopod for these photos, taken in and around Kyoto Station.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/800 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Base
of the tower
I really like the architecture of Kyoto Station, and it likely lends itself to being exploited by a 300mm f/2 lens, but I didn't do it justice and all these photos are fairly boring. But this is a “story” blog, not a “photo” blog, so I'll continue the story of my first day with this lens...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1000 sec, f/2, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Man of Mystery
I had hopes that the effect would be interesting, of focusing on someone when they were only half visible, still far from the end of the escalator. But I see that it's not.
For this next one, since everything was pretty far away, I thought I'd see whether a smaller aperture (f/5.6 rather than f/2) might make things look better, but it seems pretty boring either way...
This next angle shows some promise, though it still needs to be “made” by some particularly interesting nature of the people, which I didn't get here...
Still, it's not too bad for 1/50th of a second at 300mm. As I said, I was using a monopod.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/60 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flauting the Rule?
At one point a pair of security guards approached and asked why I was taking photos. When they realized that I was not a pro, but just snapping photos for myself, they said fine and left me to continue. But five minutes later, several levels down, another (younger) pair approached and told me to stop. When I told them that I was just told it was okay, they claimed not to know who might have said that, and asked me to stop.
People are taking photos here 24/7, such as the guy in the picture above, so his request seemed inconsistent with both his co-worker and the obvious reality. But it's not my land, and he represents the land's owner, so I left.
I'm curious as to what the official policy actually is, but I couldn't find it on their website. It's probably something purposefully vague along the lines of “so long as you don't bother others”, which leaves it up to the discretion of each employee to enforce as they see fit, in which case my experience wasn't inconsistent. Who knows....
So, I went outside and tried a few there...
It had been a long day, and I had an even longer one coming up the next day (about which I will have at least a dozen posts, I'm sure), so I lugged myself home to bed.
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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1600 sec, f/2, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Married
but not to each other
This is a continuation of “Street Photography (Sort of) In Roppongi Hills", about some random street photography I did with a 300mm f/2 lens.
It's a huge lens, but not because it has such a great amount of “zoom”. The Sigma “Bigma” goes to 500mm (and with a 2× TC, to 1,000mm), but because it's “fast”... it has a huge front element that just drinks in huge amounts of light. It makes the Bigma, which I thought was big, look like a cute little infant.
Because of its size, it's a conspicuous lens that attracts copious amounts of attention, though as it turns out, it's (mostly) in the form of unsolicited smiles and friendly conversation. (It also attracts attention from train-station security guards, but that's another story.)
All photos on this post were shot hand-holding the lens, with manual focus (the lens doesn't support automatic focus). I had a monopod with me, but didn't use it except for three photos in the previous post, and some night photos we'll seen in a followup post.
I chatted for quite a while with the friendly folks seen above, co-workers whose families are friends (their respective kids' were playing together in the park). It took me a while to realize that they weren't married to each other, and they joked that their families had been friends so long that it was almost as if they were. The lady is the same one seen after fending off the pigeon attack in the previous post.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1600 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Modern Stone Lantern
After wandering around the park behind Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi, I started back to the station, pausing to rest on a railing by the street. I sat there for 10 minutes just snapping anything that looked interesting...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/3200 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Race
( not really )
This is a great example of how sharp this lens can be, even in the shaky tripod-less hands of a first-time user, taking a manual-focus picture of a moving taxi as it approached...
full-resolution crop
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1600 sec, f/2, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Curb Flowers
small slope across the street from where I sat, surrounded by city on all sides
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1600 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95
on a Lumix GF1
The guy above was walking by, but had stopped and gone back and forth a few times, and when he stopped as if to see whether he knew where he was, I snapped this shot of his camera. It turns out that he was just working up the nerve to talk to me, so when I said “hi”, he asked about the lens and we chatted for a bit.
I see now that his lens must be the Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95, the only sub-f/1 lens I know of in current production (though alas, not for my camera). A friend has this lens and I played with it once, and as a tangential byproduct, Lightroom 3.4 can now handle Exif metadata for shots taken with apertures larger than f/1. 🙂
Anyway, the shot above is another great example of the sharpness (and of my luck with the focus) of the 300/2...
full-resolution crop
The lens aperture “0.95” seems to be the most sharp, but what I really notice is the huge difference in sharpness between the “Panasonic” on the camera body and the “Lumix” on the viewfinder, only an inch or so closer. There's just no margin for focus error.
And that's the real value for this big 300mm f/2 lens. In the film days (the lens dates from 1983), the “sucks in light” aspect was important for sports photographers and the like, but the need has diminished considerably in the last few years as digital sensors have become so ridiculously sensitive. But a related effect is this lens' ability to throw everything in front of and behind the plane of focus into increasingly dreamy out-of-focusness. This is easy to see close up with a macro lens, such as with my recent “Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh with Lily of the Nile”, but it becomes increasingly less-dramatic of an effect the further away you get. Except, it seems for this lens...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/2000 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Isolated
This next shot, of a shinkansen (bullet train) in Tokyo's Shinagawa Station looks fairly normal in the small version, but has an almost toy-like look when viewed large (which you get by clicking through the image).
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Little Toy Train
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/3200 sec, f/2, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Serendipity at 239.1 km/h
shot out the window from a bullet train going 150mph
A Japanese bullet train can go really fast, but that's nothing compared to how fast the scene flies by when you're looking through a 300mm lens at 240kph. There's just no way to react or to purposefully focus on something unless it's miles away, so I was mostly shooting blind just to see if I got anything interesting. Every shot ended up being thrown away, except this one. At the time, it didn't register in mind that we has passed a street until it was well out of frame, and I didn't notice the kids at all, so it's pure luck. It would have been nicer if luck would have left the focus on the kids, but I still like the feeling of the result anyway.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1250 sec, f/2, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Peek
train arrives at Kyoto Station
This is a great example of a bad shot... the conductor peeking out of the quarter-mile-long train is not in focus, but she's in a lot more focus than anything else of interest, so I think it's not totally uninteresting.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1250 sec, f/2, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Checking Email
I was hanging around the front end of the platform to catch some trains coming and going, and between trains took this picture of this building 200m away...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1250 sec, f/2, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ten Minutes to Go
You'll realize just how absolutely amazing this shot is if you can figure out how it got its caption. (This shot was not purely hand-held; I'd rested the lens on a railing.)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/400 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Departure
it's pulling away, though the rear is a front as well
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/1000 sec, f/2, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Quality Time
girl in a train on the opposite tracks
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/400 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tired
of waiting
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — 1/400 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Analog
in a sea of digital
( Sorry if I made you yawn two pictures up )