Late last week I started to get itchy feet again, feeling the need to take a trip. I started thinking about some places I might want to go, and in the back of my mind the Izu peninsula came bubbling up.

At first I was thinking about taking a driving trip around the entire peninsula, but I didn’t really want to spend too much time behind the wheel.  That’s not really my idea of a vacation.

So I checked out a map of the rail lines that connect to Izu, and found that I could very easily take a train to Atami, a city on the north east coast of Izu.  And after working out the time tables I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that it took just about 90 minutes from my local station to Atami station, and I only had to change trains once. But, the train trip ended up taking a bit longer than 90 minutes since the JR Yokosuka line from Yokosuka to Ofuna was delayed due to a fire further up the track near Shinagawa.    But once I got to Ofuna I swtiched to the Tokkaido line and rode that all they way to Atami.

Click HERE for today’s photos, all were taken during my trip to Atami and there is a boatload of them.

Atami itself is a coastal town, and maybe 25-30 years ago it was a top tourist destination for the people of Tokyo.  But I guess that during and after the economic bubble, Japanese people started taking more trips overseas and Atami sort of dropped off the map as far as tourist destinations go.

Additionally, the constant migration of Japanese people out of the smaller cities and into Tokyo has ensured that the younger generations that normally would have stayed and lived their lives in places like Atami have moved to the big city. This has left Atami (and cities like it) with a  shrinking tax base, and consequently the city has been on a slow decline economically ever since.

But don’t let this dissuade you from going there.  I actually found it a refreshing change from Tokyo.  The shops and signs are all a bit (or in some cases A LOT) older, and in this way it has a whole different feeling than the big city.  It’s almost as if time has stood still there for a couple of decades and I’d like to think it is more akin to the Japan from years ago.

The place is actually pretty cool.  From the quirky signs reminding you to be kind to the local tsunami’s (see today’s photos and you’ll understand), to the Geisha shows that are held daily,  to the overall “wabi-sabi” feel of the place, and last but not least, the world famous “Hihoukan” (Secret Adult Treasure Museum, I especially like their slogan “What’s cool: 100%”).  Hihoukan itself has got to be the most profitaboe museum in all of Japan.  It costs nearly 2,000 yen to enter, and from all apperances it was a low budget enterprise from the start, and over the years I’ll bet the owners have pumped at least 300 to 400 yen per year into the place to keep it maintained.  It’s definitely seen better days, but even so, it is a must see item when you are in Atami.  I can’t say if I’ll ever fork over the yen to see it again, but it’s nice to know what a museum designed by Austin DANGER Powers would look like.

But what is really nice about Atami is the onsens.  It’s a place that has been blessed with an abundance of hot springs, and due to it’s current state of relative upopularity, the prices to stay at a pretty decent place are very reasonable.  The price per night was only 3,500 yen for Thursday, and 5,500 yen for Friday.  This did not include any meals, but the room was clean and spacious, and the onsen was absolutely wonderful.

The Izu coastline is also a sight to behold.  It’s a very short trip from Tokyo, but it’s a whole different ocean.  Deep blues and greens, and of course lots of fresh seafood.  The only side trip that I took was to go take a train ride to  Jogasaki and check out the suspension bridge.  It’s an absolutely beautiful coastline.  Beatiful enough into making me thnk that on my next trip I may do it by car.

Will I go back?  Most definitely.  Two thumbs up.

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Todays funky link:  Japanese Bug Fights Gladiatorial combat in the insect world.  May the best arthropod win!

Sorry to be off topic here, but you still have TODAYS PHOTOS to help you with your Japan fix.  I apologize for the divergence, but I had to share some things with all of you out there.

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A couple of days ago I upgraded my browser to Firefox 3.  Version 2 was not really giving me any troubles, but I figured that having the latest version could not hurt.

During the install process I explored some of the new features of Firefox 3, and one of the new add-on features is called PicLens .  I don’t usually install add-on features to my browser, but the fact that this one seemed photo-related, it caught my interest.

All I can say is that if you enjoy browsing photos or videos on sites such as Flickr or YouTube, you NEED PicLens.  It makes browsing photos and videos an incredibly intuitive and enjoyable experience.  I have no doubt that PicLens will very quickly become widely recognized and used by many.  It really is that good.

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As many of you who have been following this blog for a while know, I have been through a fair number of cameras in the past 8 years.  Everything from small pocket point and shoot models all the way up to state of the art pro SLRs.  I mainly shoot with SLRs, but at times I would much prefer to have a smaller camera that still takes great photos.  This is the main reason why I bought an Epson R-D1.  It’s a rather compact camera, and the lenses are for the most part very compact and of high quality. The only thing it lacks is auto focus and auto aperture control.  I don’t mind shooting manually, but at times I would prefer a camera with the size of a compact point and shoot camera, but the ease and versatility of a DSLR.

My purchase of a Nikon D40 was a step in that direction.  At the time I bought it, it was the smallest DSLR on the market.  The problem is that the lenses are no smaller than a standard SLRs lenses, so its not really very compact.

So what is a guy to do?

Enter the Olympus E420.

The E420 is an iteration of the E410.  It is an extremely compact DLSR, and since it forgoes the traditional bulging hand grip, the form factor of the camera is reduced considerably.  It seems Olympus is getting back to its 1970’s roots of extremely compact SLRs.  But what makes this camera a real joy is the new Zuiko 25mm f2.8 pancake lens.  When this lens is coupled to an E420 body, the result is the smallest, lightest DSLR/lens set in the world.  25mm sounds kind of wide, but the fact that the Olympus 4/3rds sensor has a 2x crop factor, this equates to a 50mm field of view.

Just to give you a rough idea of how compact this setup is, here is a photo that shows an E420 with 25mm lens (50mm equivalent) compared to a Canon 5D with a 50mm lens.

Here is a photo that shows an E420 with 25mm lens (50mm equivalent) compared to an Epson R-D1 with 35mm f2 lens.

I can already see that the image quality of the E420 is not on par with the 5D (and I don’t expect it to be at the given price point ).  The images are noisier than what I am used to out of a DSLR, but still quite a bit ahead of what your standard point and shoot digital camera can produce.  (Not counting the fixed focal length 28mm f4 Sigma DP1, which I don’t count as a "standard" point and shoot camera due to its larger imaging sensor )  Of particular note to me was the limited highlight recovery headroom on the E420’s RAW files.  I am just not able to extract as much detail from the blown highlight areas of the E420 files the same as I can from Canon RAW files.    At the moment Adobe Camera RAW does not support the E420 Olympus RAW format, so hopefully that when this support is added the ability to extract more detail from the RAW files will be improved.

So there you have it.  The E420 is not a perfect camera (I’ve yet to use a PERFECT camera.. .), and it’s main warts appear to be higher image noise that I am used to from a DSLR (due to the smaller image sensor and the Olympus file processing algorithms ) and limited amount of RAW headroom.  But, compared to any other compact auto focus digital camera I have used, it’s still way ahead of the game.

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A recent leak on the new, yet to be released, Nikon DSLR (D700) shows that it stands to be a really stellar camera.  Basically, it’s a Nikon D300 body with the same image sensor as the D3.  Canon better respond with something special with their much anticipated 5D replacement, otherwise they stand to lose a lot of users to Nikon.

For years Canon has been in the lead in the DLSR department, but the D300 and D3 have started to change this.  The D700 could provide enough momentum for Nikon for it to become the tipping point product where Nikon becomes top dog in the DLSR world.

I love competition like this, as it benefits all of us who buy cameras.

Today I woke up at the crack of , er, 10:30, and after having a late breakfast I was out the door and on my way to Kamakura.

Similar to one of my recent trips to Kamakura I did not have any special destination in mind, I just wanted to wander. If I were forced to state a gaol for the day it would be this, “Find something new”. A new place that I had not seen previously. That is getting harder and harder to do for me, but I am happy to say that I still managed to achieve my goal for today.

Originally I had planned on focusing my photographic efforts around a theme. Such as “lines”, “color”, or “shadow”. But two thngs prevented me from doing so:

1.) I could not think of a theme that felt right.

2.) I made a pit-stop at the Family-Mart combini adjacent to Kamakura station for a beer and that quickly put me into a creative mood, so a theme for the day suddenly felt superfluous.

Click HERE for todays Photographs

OK, with no further delay, let’s get into todays images:

This first image is part of a Mikoshi that I came across as I was walking near the coastline. The dragon carving on the left side is one of the four corner columns supporting the roof of the Mikoshi. I could have taken a shot of the entire thing, but there were a lot of power lines and other distracting background elements involved. Even shooting at an extremely wide aperture (f1.2) I was not able to Adequately separate the mikoshi from the background, thus I decided to get up close and capture some texture and color.

I shot this photo with an Olympus Zuiko 50mm f1.2 at f4 if I remember correctly.

Minimal post processing was done, mainly just pulling down some highlights and increasing the shadow levels.

I really like the contrast of the purple with the wood tones.

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The next photo for today is a shot of a sign in the parking lot of Komyoji in Kamakura. This photo was laso shot with the Zuiko 50mm, but this one was shot at its widest aperture setting on f1.2.

This allowed for an extreme separation of the sign from the cluttered background of the parking lot.

Not the most interesting photo, but it does illustrate that funny kinds signs you see here in Japan.

Even without being able to read it you can pretty much guess what is means.

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Up next is another artistically challenged shot. This is a photo of a neighborhood trash/recycling collection point. Notice the schedule posted above which explains which types of items are to be placed there on any given day. The blue net is used to keep crows at bay when there are actual bags of trash present. The brooms and dust pan are used by the person tagged with maintaining the place in an orderly fashion. Neighbors take turns maintaining the trash collection point, with each house be given a block of time that they are responsible for. (Usually a week at a time)

This is the way that it is done in regular neighborhoods in Japan where the people live in single family homes. When I lived in such a place I took my turn taking care of the gomi more times than I can count.

Now that I am living in a Mansion with a building manger I no longer have to take my turn on gomi patrol. I can’t say that I miss it, but I am glad that I got a chance to do it. (Kind of how I think about High School…)

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Next is a snap of a train conductor at Kamakura station. Nothing at all out of the ordinary about this shot. Although, I would like to make an observation; every time I see a scene like this the persons watch is always visible, and it is always on the arm closest to the window of the train. As the train is about to depart the conductor always consults his watch and will only give the signal to start once the exact moment has been reached.

The attention to detail about keeping the trains running EXACTLY is one of the things that I really love about Japan.

Everyone knows how to do their job, and they make an effort to do it well.

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OK, time to a get a little more artistic. This next shot is a blossom getting ready top burst open. What I really liked about this photo was the contrast of colors with the dark green bud on the bright yellow background. The yellow background is from a flower that has already bloomed.

The bud was actually really tiny, so I used a 100mm macro lens to fill as much of the frame as I could.

Even so, I was not able to get in close enough so I did some cropping in the post processing in order to pull in even closer.

I like the simplicity of this shot.

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OK, next is what I have to say is my favorite photo of the bunch. It’s a shot of a rain drop on a Ginko leaf.

A very simple subject, but what makes this one particularly pleasing to my eye is the symmetry of the leaf stems.

The two parallel lines of the stems are in direct contrast to the flowing curves contained in the rest of the image. I also like the green and black simplicity and dark non-distracting background.

Even without the rain drop this would have been a nice image, but with the rain drop it adds a little extra dimension.

I did struggle with deciding wether or not to crop this image. I wanted to position the raindrop a bit more to the right and lower than it currently sits, but that made the shot feel too cramped. So I just left it as I had originally shot it.

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Next is a shot that I did not plan, it just kind of fell in front of me and I snagged it. I was walking down a small street towards the ocean, and walking in front of me were two old women.

They eventually turned off on a side path and I was about to pass them bye when I noticed the ajisai in full bloom.

So I quickly set my Zuiko 21mm f3.5 lens to f8 and hyperfocal distance.

As I passed the side street I turned, quickly framed the shot and tripped the shutter. As the shot was taken a title immediately leapt to mind: “Old Friends”.

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The last shot for today is also the most heavily post-processed of the group. The reason I had to do this was because it was a very high contrast scene, beyond the ability of my camera to properly capture.

In the original RAW file the sky was totally white, and the shadows under the tree branches were completely black. But, because I had captured the image in RAW there was quite a bit of recoverable data in the image that was able to be coaxed out during the post-processing stage.

The image does have a painterly effect, and looks more like a colorized black and white picture than a true color capture. The effect while not at all natural, is still pleasing to my eye.

In retrospect, I think I should have pulled down the saturation of the reds a bit. But overall I am pleased with the image so I’ll let it stand.

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On another note, I wanted to let you all know of an interesting website that I recently stumbled across.

It is called Four Corners of Japan and is the running photo/travel blog of a couple of guys who decided that walking the length and breadth of Japan would be a good idea. One guy is going from South to North, the other is going from East to West. (One guy has already dropped out, but the other is still at it)

They started their journey not too long ago so catching up on what has transpired so far should not be too difficult.

I look forward to keeping tabs on the adventure.

Last Sunday I met up with the "Tokyo Cameras " photography club.  We get together on each 3rd Sunday of the month to shoot pictures, and pump enormous amounts of yen into local izakayas.

–Click HERE for todays photographs–

OK.  I have decided to let the cat out of the bag.

I am not as good of a photographer as some may have been lead to believe . Let me explain…

In creating a photograph there are various elements that come into play. Here are some of them, in no particular order:

1. Interesting or captivating subject material
2. Lighting
3. Timing
4. Creativity
5. Composition
6. Equipment
7. Persistence
8. Equipment
9. Skill
10. Luck

If one is lucky enough to have all (or most of ) these attributes align, then it is an almost sure-fire recipe for great images.

But even if you have a few of them missing from the mix (skill for example ) you may be able to make up for it by the shear number of photos taken, improving your chances of getting a good shot.

Of all these, I’d like to now shortly discuss Skill.

This could be the skill in using the camera and making the appropriate choice in settings, but almost equally as important in this day of digital file capture is ones ability to extract from the RAW data the feeling (or feelings ) that was being experienced when the image was captured.

Digital cameras have nowhere near the dynamic range of film, particularly black and white film. And it is this limitation on dynamic range that often greatly handicaps the photographic process. One extreme solution to this issue is High Dynamic Range (HDR ) photography. This is a technique where multiple exposures of the same scene, each made using a different exposure value are combined to provide an image with dynamic range far beyond the native capability of the image sensor.

This makes for some absolutely captivating images, but is often taken too far and the resulting images (through heavy handed tone-mapping) end up looking more like a Salvador Dali painting that a photograph.

Interesting? Yes.

Artistic? You Bet.

Realistic? Hardly.

This leads us to the first image for today: This is a photo of the Tora-san statue in front of Shibamata station. This is exactly as my camera captured it.

Note the rather blown out sky, lacking almost all detail. It really provides for a bland backdrop to the main subject.

The "fix" to this is to recover some of that lost highlight detail. I did this using the adjustment sliders in the Adobe Photoshop CS3 RAW processing software.

I pulled down the exposure a bit, then boosted the shadow detail to bring out more of his face. I then increased the black levels, while also increasing overall brightness.

The result of this work was the following "After" image: Same exact framing, just used some selective exposure adjustment to make the image appear closer to what my eye actually saw, and not what the camera with its limitations was able to capture.

Quite a change.

And the extra detail now present in the sky makes the main subject feel more separated from the background, resulting in an image that doesn’t feel so "flat".

So this was a case of overcoming the limitations of the equipment (inadequate dynamic range) through some selective post-processing.

I was only able to accomplish this because I had originally captured the file in RAW format. If I had been shooting in JPEG, the highlight detail would have been unrecoverable. I hope this clearly illustrates the value of shooting in RAW, and those of you that have been shooting JPEG will give RAW a try for yourself.

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The next image for today: This is a photo I took at a train station up near Shibamata.  As I was waiting for my train I noticed this young boy lost in thought, and all alone on a train.

I did not have much time to capture the image, so i just included enough space around him to allow me to work the composition part of the picture later on.

Dynamic range was not an issue for this shot since this is not a challenging lighting condition, so no adjustments were needed in that area.

I was using the 24-105mm f4 IS L lens at the time, and was zoomed in to the full 105mm. This ended up not being enough reach, and I felt that the resulting image had a few distractions that were taking away from the main subject.

So, when I got this image into my computer I applied probably the most basic of all editing techniques:

Cropping.

As you can see, I trimmed out the edge of the door on the left hand side of the frame. I also cut out the green logo on the top-left edge.

This left much more simple composition that allows the viewers eye to really zero in on the subject.

This also allowed me to "Zoom-in" a little more than the actual lens I had been using was capable of. This allows us to more clearly see the expression on the young boys face, which is he real subject of this image.

I also did a quick curves adjustment to brighten the image up a tad, and bring out the white, black, and red colors of the train.

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Next: Taishakuten - Shibamata: The first thing I did with this image was selectively focus on the roof of the Temple building, and include a fair amount of sky. I did this for two reasons: 1) The place was really crowded and I did not want any people in the shot, and 2) There were some interesting clouds that I knew I would be able to do something with later on.

To add a feeling of depth I included a foreground element; the pink (fake) flowers.

Similar to the first image, this one needed some selective exposure compensation. Additionally, I had to clean up a dust/dirt spot on the top right corner.

The resulting "After" image: I do have to admit that I went a little crazy with this one. As I was adjusting the exposure I went a little further than I probably should have if my intent were to portray the scene as it actually existed.

But I really liked the ominous feeling that the new, darker image was giving off.

And since this is art, and not photojournalism I wen t with it and boosted the saturation to make the bright pink flowers clash with the dark ominous background.

I like how the two oppose each other.

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This next "Before" image did not need a whole lot of work to bring out what I wanted: The real strong point of this image focus of this image is its composition.

Too many times people get caught in the rut of trying to get the whole object into the frame and don’t like when parts of the subject get cut off.

This commonly ends with an image with no strong subject, and the viewers eye is left to bounce around the image, looking for a home.

As you can see in the next "After" image, the composition remains the same (no cropping was done) and the only real adjustment was to ever so slightly increase he saturation of the image.

This time the camera nearly nailed it and captured the image as it had appeared.

When shooting JPEG the camera always automatically adjust things such as saturation, contrast, and sharpness.

My own post-processing of the image is no different. But the important difference is that I only apply as much of each of these setting to bring out what I want o portray. I don’t leave it up to the camera to decide.

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And here we are at the last image of the day: I shot this using an Olympus 50mm f1.2, at f1.2. I wanted to really separate the small lantern from the torii gate in the background.

I was walking throgh Shibamata with some other people from the "Tokyo Cameras" photo club so i did not have a lot of time to check and adjust the exposure, and the resulting image was a bit overexposed.

But because i had shot it in RAW (are you seeing a pattern yet?) I knew that i would be able to very easily correct the exposure
later on.

Here is the "After" image. All I did was pull down the exposure setting and increase both the black levels (slightly) and the brightness levels (again, slightly).

The resulting image is (at least in my opinion) much more pleasing to look at.

So there you have it.

Great photos (and I’m NOT saying that any of my images are great) are not made by magic.

It is usually a combination of the factors listed above, followed by some degree of post-processing to really bring the work to maturity.

–Click HERE for todays photographs–

Have you heard of twitter? It’s a microblogging site that limits you to a mere 140 characters per post and which the Japanese have taken to whole-heartedly. Here is an outstanding video explaining what it is.

Tokyo and Osaka are the number one and nine heaviest users of the site in the world.

I’m writing this however because there is a distinct lack of English-speaking Japan bloggers using the service as far as I can tell and I think it would be of great use to our community. Imagine if Sushijeff wants to go on a group photowalk around Shinjuku and could mobilise a crowd of photobloggers within an hour.

Imagine if Pachipro wants to go to a restaurant with local sushicam readers and after posting on his twitter page, 20 showed up. It’s a great way to reach a lot of people instantly.

So Twitterers of Japan Unite! Lend me your ears and sign up for twitter.

Simon recently temporarily left his wife and baby in Japan to find work back in England. He blogs over at Quaisi.net and twitters at http://twitter.com/quaisi