Sushicam

This past weekend I went to Hida-Takayama again.  My friend Peter hooked me up (again) to take part in another monitor tour that was sponsored by the city of Hida-Takayama.

With how winter-like the weather has been recently here in the Kanto Plain, I was thinking that it was going to be downright COLD up in the mountains of Gifu-ken.  But as it turned out it was rather nice.  

Unfortunately I have not yet had the time to go through the phtoos from that trip, so instead todays photos are from a recent meetup in Waseda with some people from the Tokyo Cameras Photos Club

*** Click HERE for todays photos***

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The Sunday befroe last I met up with a small goup of people from the Tokyo Photo Club that I joined a bit over a year ago.  We usually get together on the third Sunday of each month, but this stime one of the people decided to get a smaller group of people together a week early.  I was up for it since I had to miss this months get together on account of my being in Hida-Takayama.

We met up at Waseda station, a place that was totally new for me.  The weather was not very nice, kind of a slow intermittent drizzle all day, but on the bright side it did cast a very soft and diffused type of light.  (MY favorite)  And over the years I have come to actually prefer shooting in less than fully sunny days.

I think I prefer the softer light of an overcast or rainy day because digital sensors still can’t cope with bright sun.  The highlights and deep shadows present too much dynamic range than a digital sensor can effectively capture.  I guess if I were shooting a lot of film I would just choose to shoot film on the bright and sunny days, and digital every other time.  I’ve got plenty of film cameras, but I just can’t seem to get excited about shooting film.  And in truth, I never really did get excited about film.  Back in the day I shot film because thats all their was.  But as soon as I got my first digital camera (An Olympus D340R, 1.3 megapixels and NO zoom) I never looked back.

yes, it is fun to shoot medium format sometimes, as the image quality is extremely good.  But when I shoot I do it with the intention of posting it to the web, so performing the initial capture digitally just makes a whole lot more sense for me.

I know a lot of people that got into photography after digital cameras were popular.  And eventually some of them start to dabble with film.  A portion of them think that by shooting film the process takes on a certain magical aura, that they suddenly become more creative or artistic.

Personally I think that’s a load of bull.

And while I agree that they should do whatever helps give them that motivation to shoot, and anything that sparks their creativity is also good.  But you don’t become  better photographer when you shoot film, the same way you don’t become a better painter by using oils instead of acrylics.

But what you will most likely do when shooting film is try harder for each shot since you know that each click of the shutter represents a discrete and measurable increment of money.

When I go out for a days shooting with a digital camera I think nothing of taking 300 or 400 pictures.  All it cost me was my time and the electricity required to recharge my cameras battery.  But were I shooting 6×6 slides (my normal film) each one fo those shots would have represented nearly $2.  That’s a $750 bill for a days shooting, and that does not include the time I would have to wait to get the film developed and then the subsequent hours spent scanning the keepers.  In reality would I ever shoot that much slide film in a day, even if cost were not an issue?  And I guess a more relevant questions is COULD I?

The answer to that one is no.  The time “wasted” changing out the spent rolls of film for fresh ones alone would account for a significant part of the day.

Whenever hear someone talk about wanting to shoot more film because they think digital has “no soul” or they feel that by using film you can be more artistic I tell them that instead of wasting their money on film, they should instead just pick up the smallest sized memory card that will give them 24-36 images when using the digital camera that they normally shoot with, and commit themselves to not chimping their images as they shoot them, and not deleting anything in the field.  And to give it the real “feel” of shooting film, they should drop $5 in a can for every memory card “roll” they fill up with pictures.

I’ll bet that this alone would be enough for most people to start taking a bit more care in creating each and every image.

Having said all this I do agree that even film 35mm is superior to digital in regards to dynamic range.  And once you step up to medium format the benefits become larger with increased resolution (if you have the scanning skills/equipment/time to extract it).  All bets are off for large format film, it blows any kind of digital capture out of the water on all but a few points: cast, speed, and changing ISO on the fly.   The closest digital competitor to large format film are digital scanning backs, but they are extremely expensive and a logistical nightmare to shoot with.

But at the end of the day, it’s not about what equipment you use.  It’s all about the motivation you have to shoot, and having an inspiring subject to shoot.

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Click HERE for Todays Photos

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I apologize for the digression from a Japan-centric topic, but today I feel like writing about todays U.S. Presidential election.  It is an historic day for America, the first time an American President elect, Barack Hussein Obama, has a set of initials that are an anagram for a premium home movie channel.  

OK, just kidding (although I do raise a valid point) the real historic thing is that for the first time an African American has been voted into the highest office in the land.  But while the broad ranging social impacts of this  solid step forward for a country that more and more has become a mixture from all corners of the Earth.  But there is also the ugly truth that racism played at least some part in the results of this election.

It is a fact that there are those that did not vote for BHO for the sole reason that he is black.  These people are obviously racist.  But there is a flip side to that coin.  There were also a lot of people that voted for BHO only because he is black.  This is just as racist as the first case.  Now I am in no way insinuating that the reason BHO won the election is because he is black.  Not at all.  I think he won the election for a whole bunch of reasons.

Who in my humble opinion do I think would be the best leader for America,  John McCain or Barack Obama?  My simple answer is neither.  I didn’t vote for either of them.  

My vote went to Ralph Nader as his platform is (to me) the most reformist of the bunch.  And when I cast my vote for Mr. Nader I knew there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell of him actually getting into the Whitehouse, I still had to vote for the one that I agreed with the most, not the one whom I thought had the best chance of winning.  

After all we are seleting our next leader, not puting some money down on the outcome of a ball game. But sadly there are a lot of peopel that vote that way since they wat to feel that their vote counted.    But I don’t believe in that, especially with a thing like the Electorial College doing the actual deciding about who will be the next president.    As it turned out the popular vote agreed with the Electoral College vote, and  there have only been three cases in American history when a president lost the popular vote but was still elected as president.  (And I might note, let me remind you that NONE of them had initials that were an anagram of any premium home movie channels)  But even if it happens only rarely that the Electoral College vote disagrees with the popular vote, I still think that each and every vote should have the same weight as all others.  Scrap the Electoral College, and truely give the choice to the people.  

I wish President Elect Obama the best, but I think he has his work cut out for him.  The economy is in the toilet, and the flush handle has been pressed.  So grab your wallets my fellow Americans as our government continues to try to tax and spend our way out of a recession.  The recent bank bailout is going to do more damage to the economy than most people can imagine at this point for the simple reason that the “money” is being printed out of thin air, and this will result in serious inflation.  There is no gold backing for the dollar (and there has not been since 1971 when the government basically declared bankruptcy by dropping the gold standard) so the only value that this paper has is what people believe it has.  And the confidence in the dollar has started a decline that we have yet to even begin to see the scope of.  (I KNEW things were bad when I saw rappers in videos flashing Euros instead of greenbacks)

And why on earth are we bailing out  banks that made bad decisions?  Let them fail for crying out loud, let the free market sort out the winners and losers, and let the economy naturally evolve into a stronger animal instead of subsidizing the gross incompetance (or rampant corruption) of those that made bad decision for whatever reason.

If I go to Vegas and blow my retirement funds at the craps table is the government going to bail me out?  No.  And they shouldn’t.  Decisions have consequences.  Live with them.

Yup, the dollar is headed south, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it ,short of going back to the gold standard, but the federal government will not be able to do that since it has been enjoing the short term benefits of a using a fiat currency for so long they don’t know how to deal with real  money.

But enough of this doom and gloom (even though I believe it all to be true) , I’ll be doin as much as I can topump as many dollars as I can into a portfolio of solid foreign stocks, as well as some gold so as to protect my own financial future.    The bottom line is that even though the U.S. markets will once again go up, the continued decline in the value of the dollar relative to other currencies will effectively cancel out these gains.  What’s the point of making a lot of dollars if they are not worth anything?  

OK, that’s enough politics and economcs for one night.  And as I said before, sorry for the digression.