Back from Japan. Interesting experience. But nothing that was amazing. Here's a few snippets of a few hundred frames I bothered to take with my camera. Most of the time, the D3 was too big to carry all day (I injured my ankle) so took mainly happy snaps with the iPhone and NEX-5. #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 The missus really like Japan. I found it pretty average. But the country overall is very clean. Very clean. And safe.
I found Japan to be awesome Really really nice photos here. Care to outline what kind of processing did you do to these images?
Ran them through Alien Skin Exposure 3 (the only customisation i made was reduce amount of film grain). Then straightened the ones shot from the hip. And thats all.
great shots mate if these were the ones that left you thinking japan wasnt a great place (for photography) then unfortunately you didnt make it round enough. no matter where you go, the time you spend is never enough eh?! would like to see a wider set though. memories. cheers
Don't get me wrong, Japan like any other heavily populated place is awesome for photography. I wish I had time to timelapse. That would have been epic upon epic. I supposed I went with great expectations, but Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto in general weren't mind blowing. Nice, but nothing special. Most photogenic place was by far tsukiji market. I enjoyed myself because I was with my partner. Hadn't seen her for half a year. So regardless of where we went, it didn't matter as such. She really loved it (especially the vending machines and munchies from convenience stores). I found the shopping to be like any other city. Should have the first blog post with photos of Tokyo by end of this month. Got a big backlog of work to publish as well as going back to a 9-5 job for the next 3 months. Also capture some flappin' amazing video from Osaka's aquarium. Actually, the aquarium was probably my highlight.
OP, hope you dont mind me asking, what do you think fo the NEX-5? The missus is looking at the NEX-3 to replace her Canon IXUS 860is as sort of a halfway point between a standard point and shoot and SLR territory. It's small and compact but packs a mean punch apparently (don't know shit about cameras, just repeating what was told to me).
We saw a lot of locals using the NEX-5 whilst in Japan. It seems to be a very popular choice over there. The NEX-5 is a PnS. It will always be a PnS. Treat it as a PnS and you will not be disappointed. It is not a DSLR. It is no micro 4/3s. It is what it is. A PnS. The image quality of the resultant photos will never be on par with a DSLR with good glass. It won't. But it will produce the best photos you'll ever see from a PnS. The NEX-5 is compact and it certainly does punch above its weight. It is relatively easy to use (shove it on iA mode). The only issue my partner found with it was that it was a bit slow to respond. Slow to show the preview. Slow to just do things in general. I've yet to go through the RAW stills from the NEX-5, but the following video was taken with it. Not too shabby I'll say. Personally, I find the 16mm f/2.8 pancake lens to be pretty useless. It is like the nifty fifty of the compact world. Cheap to make. Dirty results. Most, if not all stills and video were taken with the 18-55. I can't comment in the NEX-3. Never held one. Never used one.
Wow, that footage is really stable. Is that the optical stabiliser, a tripod, a freakishly steady hand or post-production?
According to the Sony site itself, the only difference is the NEX-5 does AVCHD video recording, the NEX-3 does not. So any perceived slowness is likely to happen on the NEX-3 and same with the lens as well, so your points are definitely helpful. She hates my PnS (old Canon) because she thinks it's slow to react and can sometimes miss a photo (I always blame it on user error ;-)) so I'll make her test it in a shop otherwise she'll be sorely disappointed. Thanks for your help though, I think it'll directly apply to the NEX-3.
I can't stand AVCHD. It is such an annoying format. I switched to mp4 immediately so that I'd save the headaches further down the road. There is some perceivable lag. If my partner says there is, then there is. But at the same time, she was happy with the NEX-5 taking her happy snaps along the way. From my use, there was lag, but I already knew that from using Ed's NEX-5 before. For stills, it does a pretty amazing job considering it is all automated. Made me quite irritated that photos were coming out left right and centre so easily whilst I had to fiddle around with metering and what nots. So much so, I ditched the D3 and shot with the NEX for a few days.