Last day in Tokyo

Back in July I spent a week in Tokyo. On my last day, I met up with my buddy Steve who lives near Mt. Fuji. Steve showed me around Shinjuku, Akibahara, and some other neighborhoods. We went to a festival for some fireworks and were rained on. Some rando put their fingers on my 31mm FA Limited's lens on accident. I ate the most incredible street food and octopus I've ever tried.


Before Steve arrived, I had about an hour to ram around Shinjuku and stumble into a Nikon shop. It was pretty great as I'd never seen one of the Canon f0.95 "Dream Lens" lenses before. After Steve arrived, he showed me all the great camera stores in Shunjuku. I wish I had bought some cameras. I wanted to but, for some reason, decided against it. Yes. Worst decision of the trip.


At Shinjuku Station, they had some mascots.


And somewhere in Tokyo this Panda waited for its owner to leave a store.


After some hours, we ended up at a festival. I forget what for, but there were fireworks over the river, too. A good portion of the people dressed in traditional Japanese garments.


Tradition mixed with modernity.


Steve and I were not the only photographers there. This girl from Hong Kong had a Holga.


Steve and I seemed, for a while, to be the only people NOT shooting medium format. I really liked this guy's Bronica. Beautiful camera.


And a giant lantern. I could have easily gone through two more rolls of film at the festival but everyone kept asking me to take their photos. Literally, they left everyone around me alone. Steve, who speaks Japanese, said someone said they thought I was a professional. I guess a lot of people heard that.


After deciding to take photos of things other than other people with their cameras, Steve and I were herded by a cop with a megaphone almost as big as him. It's pretty great.


And we stopped for octopus. Totally worth the 15-minute wait. I wanted more. I want to fly back to Tokyo and walk around until I find this place and have more.


Unfortunately, I don't have any fireworks photos because it rained. Hard. It was all Steve and I could do to keep our gear from getting wet. In the subway, we watched a few trains leave to get shots of how insanely crowded they were.


The cops tolerated us. Mostly.

In the Jet Age

A few weeks ago, I visited the Oakland Aviation Museum. It's not huge -- you can easily take it all in with a 90-minute visit -- but it has some good displays. Rooms on the sides present artifacts and dioramas that present the history of aviation. These aren't the typical timelines and such, though. The rooms dedicated to the Tuskegee Airmen and women in flight were very interesting and informative.

But I went for the planes. Planes are pretty neat and to be able to photograph them up close is a nice treat. The indoor exhibits present planes in very nice repair that are well maintained and attractive. The outside exhibits present slightly more weathered planes that show some age and abuse.

Mig-15. Pentax KM, Samyang 18-28mm 1:4 (at 18mm), Ilford P4 Surveillance Film pushed one or two stops.

This Mig-15 wasn't the best-looking plane at the museum, but it was probably my favorite. I like these old Migs with their big gaping maws like mouths sucking in air like a while drinks in krill. Developed in 1947 and first flown in 1949, these old Migs still fly today. Some air forces use them as trainers. I doubt any remain active duty fighter craft, though, as a Mig-15 against an F-22 would be like using a Tandy to out-hack a Cray.


In addition to limited use as trainers, there are a bit more than a dozen of these in the U.S. that are privately owned and used in air shows and for fun. Were I independently wealthy, I could see having one of these for fun. Of course, me flying a fighter jet ends in a fiery death for me and anyone standing where I crash. Like three minutes after getting in it. I might not even be off the ground, but somehow I would crash it. I should never learn to fly.


TMax 100, Pentax SMC-A 50mm 1:2.

This is the plane that Harrison Ford sat in for Indiana Jones. Yes. In fact, you can sit in the seat he used. How neat is that? Pretty neat.





Ilford P4, SMC-A.
Flared nostril.


Crazy 18mm perspective warping. Almost as good as a fisheye.

Bowling with Film

At the end of the previous bowling league, I decided to shoot the last night with my Pentax K2, a 50mm Pentax SMC-A 1:2 that I'd been wanting to try, my FA Limited 31mm 1:1.8, and a pocket full of Ilford P4 Surveillance Film. The bowling alley, like all bowling alleys, is dark. Pushing the film to 1600 (two stops) yielded some good results when I shot wide open.


Pushing expired film by two stops really puts the pressure on it to perform well. These images have a unique, moody, and somewhat noir-ish look about them. Even with about 30 seconds of extra processing time, they look a bit underexposed.

Putting the fun in Fort Funston

Back in April I took my dogs to Fort Funston's dog beach so they could swim in the ocean. It went well in that I only lost three toys (and only one of them cost more than $10.) I developed and scanned the monochrome film from that day, but haven't processed the slide and color negative film yet. So you may get to see more dog photos. Until then, here are some shots from around Fort Funston.


Hannah stares contemplatively out at the ocean, pondering if it has an end, what rests on its far side, and if there are dogs there.


After losing my floating Kong (the second one I've had which didn't ACTUALLY float...), the dogs found this nasty tennis ball. That, too, belongs now to Poseidon.





Fort Funston has some pretty wicked trees.


For scale, Hannah is about 95 pounds and around 27 inches at her withers.











After the beach, we stopped a 99 Ranch for dinner. I decided, on a whim, to make crawdads. I need to learn how to make crawdads. Even following the directions, they weren't that great. I think my broth was to blame.





This guy was really unhappy at the prospect of being cooked.


Carrots, potatoes, and celery -- a nice foundation for a veggie stew, but somehow it just didn't work with the crawdads.

High ISO Macros

I hadn't used my macro set up on a film camera before last week. MY macros set up is a Pentax Macro Bellows II and m Vivitar 135mm 1:2.5 lens. This yields very nice enlargement with sharp details from a decent distance. So I took out my Pentax K2 (recently back from being repaired... again) and the macro rig. For film I used Ilford P4 pushed to 1000 ISO and Kodak Double-X 5222. I don't recall which of these images are which, but here are the results:


A flower growing by the complex's dumpster


Another dumpster-collocated flower


A mushroom top about the size of a dime


Leaf -- exposed for the leaf


Leaf -- exposed for the background


Macro at f2.5


Macro at f11 or f16


Another flower


A mushroom about the size of a pencil eraser (the kind on the back of the pencil)


Mushroom hiding behind some leaves

The K2 Can, too!

Pentax's K line originally had four models -- the most film models the K line ever had. The K1000, KM, KX, and K2. Let me sidebar here for a minute and talk directly to Pentax. Pentax, who picks your names for you? They're so hard to follow! Why is the K-5 better than my K-7? What is there a K-x DSLR when there was already a KX back in the 70s? Why suddenly jump to the K-30? The K-8 trough K-29 were never released. Nikon has the right idea. D1. D2. D3. D4. That's a brilliant pattern, Pentax.

Okay, through that, the K2 was the top of the Pentax K film body line, but, I believe, the shortest-lived. The light meter in it is great -- as good as the Nikon F3 in my eyes. Also, the usability is simply and photographer-oriented. The whole K line is brilliant, but the K2 was a great flagship. So I always look forward to taking one of my K2s out. This week I took the black bodied K2 out (my chrome K2 is finally being repaired for it's stuck mirror and should be ready for use again as early as next week.) For those of you with broken or neglected Pentax film SLRs who want to get them fixed, I used www.pentaxs.com . Great service quality and turn-around time. He fixed my H3V and brought it back from unusable. I'm excited and hope to get through all my Pentax cameras with them because, with as much as they get used, new light seals and general cleaning will help a lot.

Anyway, I took my black K2 and my Samyang 18-28 back to the Trans America pyramid. Last time I used the Samyang was on the KX and was at Trans America. However, this time I focused on the park next to the building instead of the building.