Why RAW?

Taking advantage of possibly the last really hot sunny day for the forecastable future, I went out yesterday to shoot the elusive 'fields of gold'. The ripening and ripened rice crops make the once entirely green valleys shimmer with golden contrast; while beautiful it is brief, as the harvest quickly follows.

In fact, much of the rice around our apartment has been mowed and bagged, so I headed up to Gotemba, with the climb in altitude simultaneously winding back the season's progress. The challenge was great, with my goal being a fantastic photograph of an expanse of ripened crop, with composite features including blue sky, white clouds, lush green surroundings, and a complete lack of powerlines. Mt. Fuji in the background was to be a bonus.

Unfortunately I underestimated a further crucial factor: The Formula One racing being held at the Fuji Speedway (in Gotemba). While I was able to catch promising vistas from the car, the usually desolate roads were filled with buses, and the usually welcoming fallow fields had been pressed into service as endless parking lots for the fans. I couldn't slow to assess views, and pulling over out of the question.

I continued further and higher to escape the madness, but the F1 effect was spread beyond the rice cultivation zone and into the wild tall grasses. Another harbinger of autumn, the susuki is beautiful too, just not as golden, and without the associated promise of full bellies for another year.

Finally, I turned around and gave up... the sun was to high by now to really be good, and I would have to try another area on another day. Where I turned, I snapped a few pictures of my Pajero (which is now 15 years old, by the way).

The lens was a wide angle Tokina, 12-24mm. This is actually Tracy's lens, and it doesn't autofocus on my camera (the D40x, to be so small of figure, doesn't have a focus motor in the body. To autofocus, newer lenses with built-in focusing motors are required). It is an awesome lens, though, and I brought only that one on this outing.

My camera can capture the pictures in jpeg, or in RAW format, or both. I usually use RAW when I consider making the scene HDR (High Dynamic Range), but that wasn't my intention this time... I really wanted to capture the image with both, and then see what the difference would / could be. Here are the results:

If I set the camera to jpeg, the yield is this:
















The same picture saved in RAW and opened with Adobe Camera RAW 4.1 is this:
















Finally, just for fun, I converted the RAW into a single-exposure HDR image:
















There are a few more steps in opening a RAW file and saving it as a jpeg as I did above, but I can really see how it is worth the effort. I might not shoot just jpeg again!

The HDR I'll continue, but just for fun. To do it right, several exposures of the same scene are needed, requiring a tripod and a total lack of wind, waves, or walking/swaying/flying subjects. Also, my camera doesn't have an autobracketing function, which would greatly assist the process.

The predicted rains have set in, so this weekend's plans are currently under review. I hope to post again soon, no matter what we get up to!

Shouchu

A bit earlier, I mentioned that I had finally tried some shouchu. Shouchu (焼酎) is a "hard" liquor, spirits if you will, which can be made from a variety of grains - rice, wheat, and actually even potatoes. When I first came to Japan, shouchu was the "rough" drink of those who simply wanted to be drunk without spending much money. Apparently, when I wasn't looking, shouchou became de riguer. About two years ago, while out drinking with some Japanese friends, I noticed that a woman friend who (unusually for a Japanese) could really hold her liquor was constantly ordering a variety of imo-jouchu shots. Imo-jouchu is shouchu made with sweet potatoes. She and a few of the others regaled me with the benefits of shouchu in general, and they seemed to be really aware of the different "brews" of the imo-jouchu they were ordering, comparing the subtleties of taste much as we would do for wine or fine sake. I remembered this, but, not being much of a "spirit" drinker, I never bothered to further look into it.

However, since my recent womens' night out when I drank a few glasses of shouchu mizu-wari, I've become more interested in this drink. I bought myself a bottle of imojouchu which seems good. I put some of this into a glass with water - about 40/60 shouchu/water - and it's turned out to be a really nice, low calorie drink. Yes - one of the many purported benefits of shouchu (even imojouchu) is that it is fairly low-calorie at only about 50 calories per shot. Mix that with a glass of water et voila...a new fave is born!

Tokina 100 mm Macro in Yamashi

We're fairly lucky here with the number of national holidays and all the time off we get. This weekend was yet another long weekend (September 23rd was Shunbun no Hi - Autumnal Equinox day; since it fell on a Sunday, we're blessed with Monday off). Taking advantage of the long weekend, on Sunday morning Brian and I headed off the beaten track and into the mountains in Brian's Mitsubishi Pajero - a fully capably SUV. We bought beer and chu-hi, found an especially isolated location, took some photos and camped for the night.

Unfortunately, the weather didn't co-operate with us, but we still enjoyed our time in the rainy wilderness.

Most of these photos were taken with my Tokina 100mm Macro lens:

Grass with rain drops:




What's camping without a brewskie?


Japanese susuki:


Dirt in a tractor tire, saturation significantly reduced in Photoshop:


Flowers and spiderwebs in the rain:



Frog (or toad?) up close and personal:




We got back home today at about 2:00 p.m. or so. I'll eventually post a map of our travels!

Bike rides

For once we had an excellent sunny Saturday yesterday, so we got out on our Single Speeds for a bike ride followed by a few beers at our favourite beer hall/garden.

First, we checked out the progress made on the typhoon damage:


Then we stopped at the Gotemba Kogen for a beer, and took pics of our bikes. This is my Gary Fisher Rig:


Finally, still hot and sweaty from some hard riding, we re-visited this usually dry river bed only to find it swollen with clear fresh water. Of course, we couldn't resist a swim:

Spoiled by High-Speed Access

When I first came to Japan years ago, not many normal people had internet access. Dial up connections were expensive, and not to mention that even local phone calls were charged by the minute. At that time, Canada was definitely ahead of the game and people I knew (including me) even had dedicated phone lines for their net connection.

Well, times have changed. With 3G cell phones and hotspots even in my small city, internet connectivity is pretty rampant generally lightening-fast. According to this article from the Washington Post titled “Japan's Warp-Speed to the Internet Future”, the “broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States”. Huh. Who knew?

We really love our internet access and were curious about the speeds. So, after reading this article, Brian cruised over to Speedtest.net and tested his internet speed which was, in fact, rather fast. Here are the results

Not bad, really, especially as it was wireless.

Wild Women's Night Out

The weekend is well over, but we had a great time. Well, I did, anyway, since I got together with a few of "chicks" in my company and we had a day and a night out in the exotic city of Hamamatsu. Though situated in conservative Shizuoka Prefecture, Hamamatsu is actually a pretty robust city full of life - and the spice of life, too, as it has a high foreign (non-Japanese) population.

There was a Brazilian/ Samba festival going on that day, and we wanted to see some of the dancers. The general meeting time was 5 p.m, but three of us decided to go early for a little window shopping -which, actually, turned into a few hours of drinking shouchu-mizu-wari at a local bar. Shochu is a Japanese alcohol; shochu-mizu-wari （焼酎水割り)　is shochu with water. Kind of like vodka and water...I'll post later about the benefits of shochu! Anyway, a 2 p.m. start to the shochu drinking made for an interesting night!

After becoming mildly inebriated, we then met the rest of the gang for Samba, dinner and karaoke in the biggish city. Here are a few photos from our night out:

Hamamatsu folks are more appreciative of the fine art of tatoos. This guy liked my dragon, and we ended up comparing tats. He won!



The Samba girls were fabulous - really engaging, and even the older Japanese folks around were delighted:


We made it to the karaoke box (2 hour nomihodai (all you can drink)) and the karaoke fiends among us stole the show:


Not to be outdone, though, I did screech out my version of Def Leppard's Animal (much to everyone's chagrin...):



Following such tiring activity, we retired to Baden Baden, (named after the famous German town, of course) a 24 hour onsen / minshuku in Hamamatsu.

A good time was had by all....

Typhoon Aftermath

We went for a ride on Sunday, a few days after the typhoon. We went in a different direction than usual, heading up the back side of Ashitaka as far as we could manage to get, and didn't see too much damage. However, our riding buddy also went for a ride that day, and he went up one of our more frequent routes to the Fireroad - only to have to turn back because the road was out in two places. He was able to get past the first damaged area, where part of the road had crumbled into the river below, but the second section, he said, was impassable. So this morning, Brian and I headed out on our single speeds up our favourite hilly route to check out the damage for ourselves. The road was still cordoned off in one area, with a narrow path for walkers (and bikers) to get past; and the city must have cleared the debris from the landslide further up - but the damage was still significant, as you can see by the photos that Brian took at our favourite resting spot, "the swimming hole":

Brian Clockwork 29er, resting against some fallen trees, where we used to stop to rest.


The cedar forest used to be a beautiful backdrop to our swimming hole:


The pavement itself did not escape unscathed:

Turkey Photos

Well, two months late, but finally put up a web album at the Japan Rider site - you can find the album here - http://www.japanrider.com/galleries/Turkey_Gallery/ .

I have to admit that we were procrastinating - an unhealthy and unproductive habit that creeps up on us occasionally. In our defense, I say that we had to sort through more than a thousand photos, throwing away the poor ones and keeping the ones we liked. We then selected the Creme de la Creme for posting - but of course we had to then make minor (or significant) adjustments in Photoshop Elements (5.0).

Please let me know if the album page loads too slowly - I'm still trying to find the right (best) style of photo album.

Rain and cloud

The weekend turned out to be satisfactory, if not exactly sunny. We spent Saturday chilling out and enjoying the fact that we really didn't have to do anything; Sunday we went for a great bike ride up a trail we haven't tried in over a year. The trail goes past the Susono Fishing pond (very, very lame), and up the back of Ashitaka mountain. Unfortunately it doesn't go all the way to the top, much to our disappointment.

Today is a perfect Monday - dark, gloomy and pouring rain. Just like a Monday should be, I suppose.

Typhoon Fitow

We got completely slammed by Typhoon Fitow last night - fierce winds and driving rain kept all but the bravest confined to the comfort of their homes! While the rain is probably done now and there will be sunny skies tomorrow, this morning saw a disastrous disruption to the transportation system; our local train line is still not running, and the closure of the Tomei expressway has resulted in bumper-to-bumper traffic on our local roads. We managed to help most of our people get to work, and the trains should be running again by noon, but what a way to start a Friday!

Sherlock Holmes and the Midnight Sushi

The strangest thing happened today. We'd bought some sushi yesterday and were going to have it for lunch today. It was a nice mix of sushi – three pieces of salmon, three natto, three ume, three tuna, etc...Brian gets the sushi out of the fridge, and says - “Hey, we're missing three pieces”. I'm as baffled as he is – we KNOW that the package was a) full, and b) sealed when we bought the sushi. Strangely, the three missing pieces happened to be my favorite kind of sushi...this cannot be a coincidence. So, though I cannot prove it, I've drawn the conclusion that I must have eaten them in the middle of the night, though I have no memory of this.

This incident, if it's not the first of its kind, may also be a clue to the extra kilos I've put on...