Jonbu the baker

Thursday morning I’ll be heading to Nagoya for my HKG-bound flight.

The feeling is the same as when I was leaving Vancouver for Japan. I don’t know what to expect, but at the same time I’m not too excited. I never got “excited” about Japan until I arrived in Tokyo for my August long break. I think it’s because I started reading a lot about Japan, looking at weblog pictures, and such before coming, and that took away all the excitement.

For this trip to Hong Kong, I specifically resisted myself from finding any breathtaking pictures or too much details about Hong Kong. I’ve read it’s a beautiful city, dreamy, almost. I have seen some pictures, and they are wonderful. I’ve heard stories of how great Hong Kong is. But I try not to know too much this time. I will let the city itself tell.

For this trip I got myself a minolta rangefinder. Don’t know if it’s a right choice to get an used one. My original plan was to get a camera before the trip so I can film a roll and learn it before taking off. But I just received it today. Out of time.

The second plan I thought out was, I would go out and take some night shots tonite, and wake up early for some sun-rise shots tomorrow, walk around and try to finish the roll, then go for one-hour development after work. But I doubt I can finish 27 exposures in less than a day, and film is actually expensive…

So I’m ditching all plans, but taking some sun-rise pics sounds nice. So I will do that. My next post shall be about my successful attempting at waking up before the sun, or not.

This morning I woke up and looked outside. Snow actually built, and it’s at least refreshing if not pretty. I noticed that it’s already starting to melt, so I hurried down to take some pictures.

There ARE still some left-over kouyou around. I didnt even get to sort my kouyou pictures yet. Don’t really want to look at them.

This is the dorm view from our washroom. I took this shot risking being accused of being a gay hentai (Who walks around in the washroom carrying a camera?).

While I was down I wore my Sandles. It was cold~.

The barbwire that locks us in. Though there’s a door that’s always open.

When I went to the roof, I saw some steps in the snow. I title this picture
“Hm, Someone was here before me.”

Roof overview. I took this basically because I like the lines on the ground. It’s a fetish of mine.

I wore my indoor slippers onto the roof. Big mistake. The water was higher than my slipper. It’s all wet now, so are my pants.

When I was about to leave, I saw some guy in shorts and sunglasses coming out onto the roof. I couldn’t really make out who it was, but he looked distinctively non-Japanese. First thought in my mind was, “A new gaigin in our building?” Then he started grinning and walked towards me.
It was Steve! And he came up here to take pics. But he’s all prepared. Got the sunglasses and proper shoes. He said that was his second trip up. My toes were already bugging me so I didn’t hang around with him that much.

The steps in “Hm, Someone was here before me.” were probaby Steve’s.

That’s all. I managed to fit more meaningless shots than meaningful shots into this entry.

After that dream removed my writer’s block, I decided to do another post. ’s terrific day with the snow inspired me to draw something, so I decided to put my reacquired writing mood to what it’s not meant for.

This is what I first invisioned.

The chickie’s facial expression is so calm, you don’t know if it’s dead or just sleeping. The surrounding is white but pinkish, so you don’t know if it’s actually snow + snow or some bubble bath with a towel on its head.

Well, after I drew it and looked at it, something’s missing. Both in terms of the painting itself, and the fact that the chickie is not emotionally suffering like usual (Which is the core philosophy of Bikkuri Chickie). So I decided to add something to it.

Insipred by the intimidating Mr.P that overlooks everything I do from his dedicated corner.

Ahh, that’s better. Not enough color tho. Too bad after I generated the jpeg, I clicked exit, and the program didn’t ask me to Save the original file. So I’ve lost my precious strokes.

Today I went to sleep at 630pm, and woke up at 915pm.

I had a dream about flying back to my hometown Richmond, Canada. I hardly dream.

I was late for the flight, because i had too messy luggage to take care of. The plane undocked and was just about to leave, when they saw me running in the rain with my big luggages.

On the flight, I noticed the windows was extra wide, so I took my Sony camera out, preparing to take some nice in-flight views. But then I remembered that they always asks passangers not to take pictures, or use their own cd-players, cellphones during flight. So I packed the camera back in.

Fellow intern Steve was sitting next to my seat when I arrived, which is kind of weird. Maybe because he’s the last person I talked to before I went to sleep (Technically the last person I talked to is the caf lady who is always amused by how I can’t decide which menu to order)

We chatted in English I believe (Sometimes I dream in Chinese. Once I talked to my tall Canadian Elementary School Teacher in Chinese, and he talks in Chinese. )

After a while I noticed the plane never took off. It’s running on a highway. But it totally made sense in the dream. Steve was saying, “I guess it’s faster this way”. And I was like, “Yea.”

The Dream made me a happier person, and removed my writer’s block when it showed me my local mall Richmond Center (That last entry about photography was me trying to write through the block). I don’t go there all that often, but I drive by it so many times. It’s the single most strongest piece of memory that I have for Richmond. The Dream had it lighted up with Christmas lights. Good job, Dream!

And then the surroundings got all weird again. It was like the Osaka resturaunt intersection in the middle of Richmond. Then I woke up.

It was like I got a free trip back home. But I didn’t get to meet my family.

(Of Course this is completely my personal opinions and I have no guarantee that every I say is correct.)

I haven’t read those “How Digital is Better than Film” articles on the internet. I didn’t need to, because that was my belief before I really started playing with the manual features of my Sony. Well, the title of this entry could read “How Film is better than Sony”.

The struggle to choose between the two has always been a painful give-and-take.

The things I really like about film:

1. Shallow DOF
The manual controls are good if the camera is able to take advantage of them. But with the Prosumer non-dSLR cameras, the potentials are much limited by the actual focal length of the lens. I’m not qualified to lecture on this. If you happen to be interested like me, go to photo.net and dpreview.com for more readings. After reading the experts’ calculations, you will find that at the same aperture and focus distance, the DOF of the film medium is much shallower than that of digital.

But having a film camera doesn’t guarantee you a shallow DOF. You’ll need aperture priority to override the camera’s good intensions of giving you a focused picture.

My Kouyou picture and the tiny Namacha Panda picture on this journal are both taken with Aperture Priority. But it worked only because the object is like 10-20 cm away from the lens. I’m annoyed because once you get further than that with the V1, the shallow DOF is gone.

2. Fast
At first I couldn’t get used to the focusing lag of digital cameras. In fact, I choose the Sony mainly because it has the fasted rated focus speed amongst the same cataglory of cameras. And this spanking new F828 is supposing to be even faster. I know humans probably takes more time to think about a shot than the camera trying to focus it, but sometimes I just don’t think.

3. Cleaner Night shots.
Sometimes I like to try long exposures at night. But what I have found with (my camera at least) is noise start to acumulate in the shot for longer exposures, even when the ISO equivalence is set to the lowest (it’s worse when it’s higher). For film, the black parts will always be clean (right?).

There are counter arguments for each argument. It really depends on what a person wants. One thing about the DOF issue, if you want a shot to have a wider DOF, putting more things into focus, the camera will need to step up the aperture, and that means increased shutter time, which means potentially blurry pictures…

When I first came to Japan, I thought about an SLR. But hulking a camera while travelling is really not my thing. So I settled for a digital rangefinder. I should have just gone for a film rangefinder, but digital cameras are so cheap in japan, it’s torture not to buy one. A dSLR would really do all the things I need, and keep the convenience, though it’s heavy and bulky (a n d expensive).

(Now we start to get into John’s circular logic ->)

I dislike the inconvenience of film. Taking it to the shops. Buying, carrying, changing film. Scanning (Oh no, I need a scanner)…

If I do get a fim rangefinder though, I’ll surely have to sell my Sony. I can’t allow myself to put so much money into cameras.

But then again I can’t live without digital… This journal would be even drier if I have no pictures to show.

But then again if I do buy the film, I won’t want to take that many pictures with my digital…

So maybe I should just go for an dSLR, and bite the bullet on the heavy+bulky part.

But then I don’t see that happening..

(and John needs to make up his mind on his arrival in HK at the latest. Choosing the rangefinder to get, is a totally different circle.)