Prince and Skyline Museum (プリンス&スカイラインミュウジアム) in Okaya, Nagano

The same weekend I attended the MX-5 Roadster Karuizawa Meeting, I wanted to make it a point to check out the Prince and Skyline Museum located in Okaya, Nagano Prefecture. Driving from Fukui, it took quite a bit of my day to get there, but I made it with plenty of time before they closed at 5.

A family park and small amusement area with several parking lots surrounds the grounds where the museum is located. From the main parking lot, only a small sign pointed the way up the hill. The building itself only had two signs that hinted at the treasures inside.

Entry was a reasonable 1000￥ and the first floor housed a gift shop and a single car.

Despite walking down a flight of steps in the basement, it was as if the sky line opened up before me. Immediately, I could feel a sense of childlike wonderment envelop me as I strolled through the densely packed room of Nissans. Here I was, practically alone in this whole room all to myself (with merely a couple, their child, and a staff member wandering about briefly). 

The first area was lined with display cases of replica scaled cars, a few parts, magazines, manuals, and other paraphernalia.

The front had these beautiful, immediately recognizable Nissans.

The right side and left sides of the museum housed pristine examples of historic Nissans.

Toward the back wall sat these gorgeous beauties.

So, any chance I can drive these home?

According to a staff member, some of the cars are rotated out, so selection of cars will vary depending on when you visit. Also to note, the museum is closed in the winter months from November to March.

Prince and Skyline Museum

www.prince-skyline.com

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

Nasu Classic Car Museum in Nasu, Tochigi

I took a summer road trip to Hokkaido last year and I passed through the Tohoku (North Eastern) Area of Japan on my way back to Fukui. As you probably already know, Japan really loves cars, given especially many cars around the world are designed and/or manufactured here in this rather tiny country. So it’s no surprise that there are also quite a few cool car museums all over.

Here is the one I went to most recently, the Nasu Classic Car Museum located in Nasu District, Tochigi Prefecture.

At 1000¥, the entry ticket price is a bit expensive, but for the beautiful quality collection of classic foreign cars, it was well worth the price of entry for me.

Many of these cars are exceedingly rare anywhere in the world and even more so in Japan, as most of these were not imported in any large quantity.

I’ll admit I don’t know much about classic cars, so please enjoy my pictures.

There were also a few cars you could sit in.

They even have a genuine Mach Five from the 2008 Speed Racer movie.

While this small collection may not be worth a separate, long trip to see, I highly recommend stopping by the museum if you happen to be remotely nearby.

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

[ Nikon D40x ] Yongnuo 50mm F1.8 F-Mount Prime Lens Review

Shortly before picking up my Sony cameras, I bought a cheap Yongnuo 50mm F1.8 lens off of Amazon. Having read a lot of the benefits of using fast prime lenses, I wanted to experiment with a cheap one before investing too much in a Sony E-mount-compatible prime lens which are much more expensive. At only about $65 USD, I had little to lose in the purchase.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can find it here on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.jp

Design
For the price, I definitely had low expectations. The housing is fully plastic, but seems otherwise durable enough. The ring is a bit on the rough side, but is still more than acceptable for minor adjustments. The end of the lens is also 58mm threaded for covers and filters.

The AF / MF slider on the side makes it easy to decide when you need to switch between manual focus and autofocus...

Features
...which is one of the most surprising features about this lens: it really, seriously has autofocus! At this price, I would only expect manual adjustments, so this was a huge bonus. In reality, though, the autofocus is not actually very fast and definitely is not as accurate at focusing on subjects as the kit lenses. At times, it even seems to get confused and refuses to focus unless the shutter button is released and re-engaged. However, for ease-of-use in many situations, it does the job adequately.

The biggest drawback of the lens is that at any wide aperture opening, the infinity focus is miserable and cannot focus well at all, even manually. Mildly close objects more than a dozen meters away are blurry and uncrisp.

For such a cheap lens, the focused images actually look great. Here are a sample of some photos I took last fall with the lens.

At full F1.8 aperture opening, there is some chromatic aberration.

Stepped down to 2.8, though, and the results are still quite stunning.

The amount of light the camera gathers is pretty amazing, creating a gorgeous depth of field.

The background boke is quite lovely.

Conclusion
As expected at this price, this is not a serious lens for a serious photographer. For my amateurish needs, however, this $65 lens is a steal. It is a great addition for any beginner to play around with and get gorgeous shots with little effort.

After using the lens for a few weeks last fall, I found that the 50mm, while acceptable for portraits, was way too close for other work such as my food porn shots. This solidified my decision to pick up a 35mm as my next prime for my Sony bodies, look forward to a review next time.

This was my last accessory purchase for my Nikon, as just recently my old beast finally gave up the ghost. RIP…

[ Photography ] Sony NEX-5 Mirrorless Review

I have been enjoying my Sony A6000 and A6300 for a year now, at least one of which is always going everywhere with me. I even squeezed more shots out of my old Nikon D40x, but after a few thousand more photos, the shutter issue appeared again. I suppose the old beast has done more than I could ever have expected, so it was about time I retired it.

However, the D40x had a lens that I really needed, a 70-300mm zoom that really could bring subjects up close without me getting in the way. This was particularly useful for sports competitions, where it was not possible or practical for me to get really close with my current 18-135 zoom on my Sony bodies. Now that I’ve fully committed to the E-mount, I searched for a replacement and came across a “kit lens” 55-210 and a full-frame 70-300. The 70-300 was exorbitantly priced at over $1200 so that was immediately out of the question. The retail for the 55-210 was about 42,000￥ ($390 USD), but since it was also commonly included as part of the “Double-Zoom Kit” included with various Sony cameras, I could find it in the second hand market for around 12,000￥ ($110 USD).

This lead me to pick up a second-hand NEX-5 camera, 16mm F2.8 prime lens, 16-55 F3.5-5.6 lens, 55-210 F4.5-6.3 lens, and various accessories off of Yahoo! Auctions for barely more than 25,000￥ ($230 USD) shipped. This was a bit more than I wanted to spend on just the lens, but I figured the extra body could come in handy. I actually am still using a crappy Canon point-and-shoot ELPH150 at my workplace, so the NEX-5 will stay there permanently for whenever a quick photography session is required. Look forward to a review on the other lenses, but the question right now is “How good is a camera released back in 2010?”

Review
To put it simply, the Sony NEX-5 is a 9-year-old, entry-level mirrorless camera that cannot complete with current Alpha-series cameras. In fact, the last NEX camera, the NEX-7 (2011), was dropped in favor of establishing their entry-level camera as the A6000, released in 2014. This move pushes the Sony mirrorless line out from amateurs and beginners because even the basic A6000 is a full-featured camera that is not really suited for newbies.

That being said, the APS-C sensor is nothing to scoff at, especially since it can take 14MP RAW photos. The interchangeability of the E-mount with a wide selection of Sony and third-party lenses give it a real flexibility that traditional point-and-shoots do not have.

Design
Let’s start with the design of the camera which looks quite premium, but is actually a fairly light, plastic body. The small front grip does not make it pleasant to hold for long periods of time if the camera is coupled with anything larger than the 16mm kit lens, as it will be very front-heavy. With the exception of the power switch, the controls are fairly easy to reach and the tilting screen is decently bright and visible in all but direct sunlight; a problem my A6000 and A6300 also have. It’s too bad the screen also doesn’t flip forward like the A5000/5100 which would increase its usefulness to amateur photographers and perhaps vloggers.

For the serious photographer, they will find the complete lack of a rear viewfinder, a touchscreen, and a hot shoe seriously disappointing. (There is also a tiny add-on flash, but I’ve not tested this.) Further, they would want a physical function wheel, a wider array of customizable buttons, and wireless connectivity.

Along with other NEX and Alpha (A7, A5x00, A6x00, etc.) series cameras, the NEX-5 shares the same versatile NP-FW50 batteries in varying mAh. While the genuine batteries are only rated at 1020mAh, they seem to last for quite awhile and aftermarket third-party batteries are also plentiful and cheap.

Function / Performance
The first thing I noted about this camera was the extremely loud mechanical shutter. It was so loud that I initially thought I had purchased a second-hand dud. I had to double-check online and it turns out it’s normal… My Sony A6000 and A6300, while not exactly quiet themselves, are absolutely a whisper compared to this. Let’s just say in a quiet auditorium, this camera will certainly draw attention for all the wrong reasons.

Intelligent Auto Mode
I suspect Sony intends most of its NEX users to take photos under the Intelligent Auto Mode and to be fair, Sony’s algorithms are pretty effective, adjusting ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and white balance quite well. Over the few hundred photos I’ve taken thus far with this unit, it seems to find good settings nearly every time, though my only problem is that I cannot change focus area in this mode. (It often misses the target I want to focus on, which is typically the center object.)

The lowest bottom of the rear buttons is also dedicated to a highly annoying Advice menu which shows several dozen pages of simple photography lessons. This button cannot be changed in iAUTO, leading me to question how often will the typical user actually refer to this? Not to mention all of the advice is very standard, basic stuff any halfway decent shooter will already know intuitively, though I suppose it may not be common sense for all.

The one interesting “cheat” in iAUTO is the adjustable boke background blur. This feature simply forces the camera to prioritize aperture, but, as expected, it only can go as wide as your lens can handle. This isn’t a software cheat like some smart phones do to get fake boke… which leads me to also question how many users will adjust this slider.

Menu
Buried in the simple menu system are the virtual function wheel and various other camera settings. The most common settings are directly in the corresponding section, though some of the more advanced options are under the Settings-specific section. Once in different modes, you can also customize a few of the back buttons to give you some quick-access settings. Let me emphasize that it is a few buttons and some settings… definitely not enough for the power-user.

The remainder of the menu is pretty Sony-esque, as it is somewhat unintuitive, but otherwise there are plenty of adjustments, filters, and controls. If it only had a dial wheel and two or so more buttons, I think it would really make this better oriented toward the enthusiast.

Seriously, all this sounds like I would hate the camera, but its real-world performance can’t be disputed. Even its older hybrid AF system is decently quick, quite sharp (when focused on the subject I want), and has reasonably effective facial and smile recognition. Even with the provided kit lens and “only” 14 megapixels, the quality, richness, and beauty of the photographs are impressive.

NEX-5 / Sony 16mm

Sample Photos
Here are some sample shots taken with the NEX-5 and A6000 at Mt. Aoba in Takahama, Fukui. Both are set on iAUTO, shot back-to-back at the maximum focal length, and utilizing the same tripod. The NEX-5 is shot at 14MP and the A6000 at 24.3MP, taken in RAW, and uploaded as JPG with no other edits.

Sony 16mm F2.8

NEX-5

NEX-5

A6000

A6000

Sony 18-55 F3.5-5.6

NEX-5

A6000

NEX-5

A6000

As you can see, the NEX-5’s images are actually quite lovely, though the color saturation is a bit heavy-handed. It surprisingly does well to minimize chromatic aberration compared to the A6000 even though they are both taken with the same lens.

Language Settings
For any buyer interested in picking up a Sony NEX series camera from Japan, be aware that there is no way of switching the language from Japanese to English, to my knowledge. There is no menu setting to change languages and unlike my A6000 and A6300, there is also no way to upload software and unlock hidden menu settings. Thankfully, I have just enough kanji reading ability to read the simplified menu system to use the camera.

NEX-5 / Sony 16mm

Conclusion
Let’s be honest, the old NEX-5 can’t compete with the current crop of basic DSLRs, but it is undoubtedly still a great starter camera for the price and excellent for beginners who want to get into photography without dealing with a bunch of minutiae. With its interchangeable lens system, quick autofocus, and solid APS-C sensor, coupled with a better photographer (ie. not me), it can take great photos which still tops the best cell phones even now.

Ramen Super Blog!

First of all, a big thank you to everyone that is reading and following along with my blogs so far. Although my readership remains anonymous to me, I can see that I have a few readers from all over the world. Which surprises me, really. Thank you.

I will continue to update weekly about my car projects, but I will now add a Ramen category which is honestly long overdue. Japan is an amazing country full of delicious culinary delights and I have never been to a restaurant here that has disappointed me. I’m sure many will agree with me, but ramen in particular has been a favorite of mine ever since I first took a slurp so many years ago. I have visited shops from all over the country and I think some of the restaurants I visit are truly worth a more in-depth mention than what I cover in my Instagram or Facebook.

So please follow along and vicariously enjoy my travels around the country, gorging myself on one salty bowl of soup at a time. And if you ever visit my neck of the woods in Japan, drop me a line and we can share in the experience.

—Will