OrangeBlossom has said some very nice things about my photos, so I thought I might share another small set. Being winter, things aren't as scenic as otherwise due to the lack of leaves, and I don't have snow tyres for Lady Mary - might get some next season, but I have paranoid worries about ripping off the front spoiler on a chunk of hard snow or something....
So I am restricted to areas and times where there isn't snow. The other day I cruised down to the south a bit, where there's a modest lake that has remained untouched by infill operations, and is now a park, with a 6.4 km walking/jogging/cycling course around the edge.



The lake, being more or less left in its natural form, is home to birds and fish of various types. This I think is a crane.


The park also offers lovely views of Hakusan, the White Mountain.


At 2,702 m, it's far from the highest mountain in Japan, but, along with the nearby Tateyama and of course Mt. Fuji, is considered one of the Three Sacred Mountains of Japan. The mountain is believed to be home to a goddess, Shirayama-Hime-no-Okami (Great Princess Goddess of the White Mountain), and the entire thing was considered sacred, largely due to how it provided water for the entire region, and also possibly as it formed a major navigation landmark for coastal ships.


It can be climbed, and I have done so, and am in no rush to ever do so again. Did it in summer, of course. Climbing in winter is suicidal. (I've also climbed Mt. Fuji, again in summer, and again, in no rush to ever do so again. Climbing Mt. Fuji in winter is, again, a very good way to get very dead. Fuji is so smooth that sudden gusts of wind, hundreds of kph in speed, can literally blow you off the mountain.)

The sunset can even make those ubiquitous golf driving ranges look almost attractive.


A lovely long straight road, with a speed limit of 40 kph.


Another angle.


Heading home....


Final shot - this reminds me a bit of that famous Hubble "Deep Field" shot of all those galaxies....

 

Hi Someday

Those Photographs look Awesome! and yet another amazing road trip in such a beautiful Country, from the Bokeh on the Cornfield to the Raindrops on the Bonnet/Hood.

What Macro lens did you use for that, I'll bet it cost more than my Camera!

Is it 40mph all over Japan, or are there roads where you can open 'Lady Mary' up?

 

Thanks, OB!
The drops weren't taken with my macro lens, but with my 35 mm prime (non-zoom). The other two lenses used for these photos were my 8-16 mm ultra-wide from Sigma, and my chunky 150-600 mm Tamron ultra-zoom, perfect for getting close to birds and mountains. The 35 mm isn't that expensive, but you could definitely buy a decent compact camera for the price of the zoom lens. That's £729.00 on Amazon UK. The 35 mm is £437.95 on Amazon UK. Okay, so that's not cheap either I guess. I'm sure with your bargain-hunting powers you could find better deals....

Speed limits in Japan are notoriously low. In town it's 40 kph (not mph - I wish!) though main roads are often 50 kph. In rural areas, usually 50 kph, sometimes 40 kph on smaller roads. If no limit is posted, it's 60 kph. Limited-access expressways are 100 kph, though that's only for divided ones - dual carriageway in UK parlance. If they're not dual, then it's more likely to be 80 kph.

No one other than old farmers in tiny underpowered trucks, plus a few snails, actually obeys the speed limit. The trick is knowing how far over you can go, and making sure you don't get caught by cops out with radar guns boosting their revenue. There's always that open, smooth road with an unrealistically low limit where they just love to prowl....

 

Hi Someday

Cheers!

I picked up my Canon 700d, which was in Mint Condition (apart from being broken) in a Charity Shop.

Yes! I know another one but at heart I'm just a deal Junkie who can never resist a bargain!

It was body only and at first they refused to sell it to me because it wasn't working and they had a quote from a Camera Shop for £100 to have it repaired.

Which was no good at all to me, as I needed a Camera to post pics on this Forum and while I know your Canon is a better one than mine, (drool) this was my dream Camera and so there wasn't any way that I was walking out the door with out it.

It only took a nano second to see what was wrong, a piece of broken SD Card had got jammed in the bottom of the Slot.

So I pulled out £100 and smacked it on the Counter, at which point their resistance seemed to evaporate just as fast as the dew on the Steps on a hot Summers day.

And then in the very next Charity Shop, you'll never guess what I found myself Three Canon EF Lenses to go on it!

A 28mm Prime, a 35-80mm and a 75-300mm Telephoto. £50 for all Three OMG!

Plus Two 'Hama' Camera Bags, where one of them was deep enough to hold the Camera with the Telephoto and a Canon Camera Strap (which costs something like £16 on its own) and I got all that little lot for only a Fiver! (£5)

Don't ask me how I sleep at night, as I just don't know!

 

A nice bargain. Mine's a 60D, which is one step up from yours, but still in the lower tiers. I'd like a full-frame next - I'm eager to see what the upcoming (I assume) 6DII offers. But the body's not as important as the glass. The 35-80 mm is probably the first one to think about replacing as soon as budget allows. The 75-300 mm is a step up from kit lenses, but the 70-300 is a bit newer and supposedly a fair bit better (never tried the 75-300 mm myself). The 28 mm prime, however, is a good bit of kit. Is it the f/1.8? That's pretty highly rated. The very good f/2.8 is older, but if it's not the IS version, even older still and not as good, unfortunately.

But that's the thing about glass - just upgrade as your demands grow, picking and choosing what suits your needs. I started out with just the 18-135 mm kit lens, and now have 8 lenses which cover pretty much everything I could want to shoot, from tiny objects right in front of me to distant mountains. The trouble is, I can't take eight lenses when travelling overseas, so I have to be content with just a few - I generally walk around with a nice Lowepro shoulder bag that carries my camera, one or two extra lenses, my video camera, and other things. Heavy, but I do enjoy taking the photos....

So now I've spent all that money on lenses, I can now start spending more on my car. I do seem to end up with expensive hobbies....

 

Hi Someday

My 28 is a 2.8 and the one I use the most, although the 'Pose Value' is Zero! though what I'm really missing is a Sun Shade. (any recommendations)

I've also got a Leica M3 but that's a proper film Camera which I don't use any more.

Also used to have a Hassleblad 500c but I sold that years ago, as again it was a Film Camera.

I am going to stay with the Canon 700d but which one were you thinking of getting next.

As far as expensive hobbies go I've got one that I call the GF.

 

There's a whole range of sun shades - those I am sure you can pick up cheaply second-hand. Just make sure it's the right size.
I haven't used a film camera since the early 1990s, when it got stolen. Nothing as fancy as a Leica or Hasselblad, however.
Personally, as I mentioned before, I am interested in the full-frame 6D (6DII perhaps, whenever it comes out) as a change, though the 80D's video capabilities are tempting in that I could ditch my video camera properly. The 60D does shoot video, but it's not as versatile as the 80D or a proper video camera.

Luckily my wife doesn't generally have expensive tastes - apart from adding to her ever-growing collection of Louis Vuitton bags....

 

Hi Someday

While I know what size of Sunshade to order, I hear a lot of people complain that if you get the wrong one, it chops the corners of the photos off (can't remember the technical term for that)

During the 'Flood that Never Was' of which we were talking a few weeks ago, we had all the TV cameras turn up to record this 'Non Event'

And many of them were using those cute little Sony's with a Manfrotto Quick release which they could set up in Seconds.

Is that the sort of thing you use, as I was thinking of getting one.

A willful extravagance really as my Canon does 1080p

Although my biggest problem is the editing, as I have now dumped Windows in Favor of Linux, which is a breath of fresh air and so easy to use and not the Techie Nightmare most people imagine.

Only problem being you can't use Windows Programmes, to do editing.

 

The best thing is to look up the lens (wouldn't matter if it's for the newer one) and see which hood comes as an optional accessory, and buy that or one the same size. And the word you are thinking of is "vignetting".

You talking about tripods now? Or just video cameras? Video cameras are much easier to use for normal filming than a DSLR - the stabilizer is usually better, the lens focuses during shooting and focuses silently, and zooming is much smoother. Newer DSLRs can overcome some of these limitations, however. The advantages to using a DSLR are the shallow depth of field for effects you can't easily get with video cams, and generally better image quality as the lens is bigger and the CCD chip is bigger.

I've never used Linux - still on Windows 7, which works fine for me - but it's possible there are ways to get things like Premiere to work on Linux. I don't really know. The lack of compatibility with programmes I need is one reason I stick with Windows. The other being "if it ain't broke..."

 

I liked those photos, you have a good eye for using the available light.

I'd always said I'd go digital when Nikon made a digital F3. The Df is as close as I'm likely to get, so I have one. Supplements the F6, although I don't shoot much 35mm film any more. The Df is full frame, it gives nice photos. These days I mainly use large format, either 4x5" or 8x10". An 8x10" Fujichrome is a thing of beauty!

 

Thanks. I generally avoid the flash if I can. And external flashes are just one more thing to carry....

The Df is somewhat more than I'm prepared to pay for a camera - I'm just a casual hobbiest, so can't really justify north of US$2,000. It appears to be pretty good, however. Incidentally, in terms of the bitter war between Canon and Nikon, and after doing my best to discern any actual difference in their images, I ended up going with Canon for one reason only: it felt better in my hands. A fatter, rounder grip.

You mean large format film cameras? That's some money, I believe.... And cumbersome to boot. I don't print mine out in anything large enough to worry about it myself, however. Nor do I bother with tilt-shifting like large-format makes easy. When I photograph tall buildings, I actually like the way normal lenses make them get skinnier at the top. Sometimes I even like to play around with this effect....

 

Yes, large format film cameras. I made the 4x5" and picked up the 8x10" cheap when people were dumping film gear for pennies on the dollar about 10 years ago.

I find the real advantage is in black and white, the tonality is so much better in the prints, the shades of grey are so much more subtle. Even on an 8x10" print it's noticeable to an average viewer.

Yes, they are cumbersome, slow and limited in the type of subjects you can photograph. But when it works, it works really well. My 8x10" (photo below, off my phone so don't judge it's quality) is 26 lbs with the tripod. I joke that if something is more than 50 feet from the car, it's not photogenic!

 

I had (and still have) Canon manual focus film gear. When autofocus came out Nikon was clearly the better system, so I went mainly Nikon. Over the years I have stuck with it as the technology advantage has gone back and forth between them. A nice advantage with the Df is I can use my old manual focus Nikkors on it, as I could with the F4 and F6 for film. Most of the modern digital Nikon bodies won't let me do that.

Photography is a hobby for me too, most of my gear was bought used. The exception was the F6 and the Df. A new body every 10 years or so isn't too onerous.

 

Bit like Ansel Adams packing his gear into the wilderness....

One thing that would be interesting to compare is the same photo taken using a 35 mm camera and a large-format camera. I see photos taken with large-formats, and, so long as they're not printed out huge, I'm at a loss to know what the difference is.

Full-format cameras are a bit like a Jag XJS - no good off road, not overly practical, need more time and effort and money, but do one thing and do it well.

 

Based on that, I suspect you're a bit older than me, as I don't remember any non-autofocus cameras. My very first camera, back in the late 1980s, was a Pentax point-and-shoot type, but definitely autofocus. My father had a couple of old manual-focus bodies, however.

 

I've done that with 35mm and 4x5". Took the same subject off the same tripod with each format and made 11x14" black and white prints from each negative and hung them up in my office. Every single person who I asked preferred the one made off the 4x5".

The sharpness was similar, but it was the tonality that everyone liked, even if they didn't know the term for it. The graduation between the shades of grey was so much smoother and more continuous from the bigger negative. More shades of grey too. The 35mm print looked harsh and thin in comparison, the blacks were not nearly as rich, even though I printed each to the same density and contrast range.

 

Similar time frame. I learned photography on my Dad's 1968 Pentax Spotmatic using slides. Totally manual camera, and slide film is unforgiving, so my mistakes were obvious! But a good way to learn by having lots of failures.

I think it was about 1990-91 period when I switched to Nikon, previously I was gifted a Canon AE1 Program from my Grandfather and used that through highschool. I think giving me the AE1 was an excuse for him to buy a new camera, but I wasn't complaining! I never used a point and shoot, I started with SLR's, either borrowed or as a hand me down.

 

Hi Someday

Vignetting

That's the Word I was looking for!

Also a great idea for finding the right lens hood, I got fed up with all the Windows Updates and the way my System used to Crash, so that was why I switched.

Linux never Crashes (probably will now I've said that! Lol)

Fantastic Photo of that very tall building by the way.

For someone who's a Hobbyist, your Photo's are much better than some Pro's

 

I was never that interested in photography in my teens - the reason for getting my first camera was simply to document my first trip to Japan way back when. I moved up from that camera, which I literally cannot remember other than it was rectangular and black, to a Pentax SLR, which I used for mostly pretty mediocre snaps, really, as I only had the one lens, and film cost money and developing cost money. That got nicked, and for years I didn't bother. Then I got a small point-and-shoot to supplement videos as well as take photos of documents for research, and was happy enough with that, until one time at a friend's wedding I got to try out a Nikon DSLR. The speed and the quality immediately sent me looking for a DSLR of my own. And as I read and researched about cameras and lenses, I developed an interest in actually taking nice photos. Which made me want to get more lenses. Which made me want to take photos using those lenses. Sort of a vicious cycle....

I don't think I would ever have got into photography as a hobby if I had to keep buying film. It's the sheer ease of taking and seeing photos on the DSLR, as well as the ease of post-processing, that allows me to feel free to experiment and learn and muck things up big-time. Sort of like having a digital V12 to practice wrenching on. Hmm. I need a digital V12 to practice wrenching on....

 

I've found my Win 7 system (assembled myself) very, very stable. It has only thrown the Blue Screen of Death a couple of times in six years. Now, it does freeze pretty often, but I know why, and it's not a Windows issue - the motherboard isn't recognising the graphics card so it all runs off the CPU GPU, which gets overloaded by things like Google Maps. I know several people who seem to constantly have had Windows issues, and they flee to Macs and never shut up about Macs (which is enough to put me off Apple for life), but my machine, which is on all day every day and I use from morning to night, just works. Until I use Google Maps too much, that is.
I suspect the secret, maybe, is that once the machine was running fine, I stopped it from ever updating (other than Defender security patches).

Thanks! Very flattered. Of course, I only post the good ones....
That building, by the way, is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest structure. It's even more impressive in the flesh. It just goes up and up and up - it's like a CGI rendering, but real, if that makes any sense.