Fukui Classic Car Meeting 2019 in Fukui City, Fukui

February 26, 2020 by William Tjipto in Cars, Japan

Two friends and I headed up on a nice, clear spring day last year to check out cars near Fukui City. Matsuda-san drove his awesome Chevrolet. So cool and so classic.

We arrived in the late morning to see quite a crowd. I was pretty surprised that there were these many car enthusiasts in Fukui Prefecture. Honestly, day-to-day, I rarely see any decently modified cars. Usually, they have some slightly nice wheels, but that’s about the extent I see typically.

There are lots of JDM older cars like Skylines.

Unfortunately for Matsuda-san hoping to represent other US classic import cars, there were not many other American or European import cars. Personally I was impressed with the range. I have never seen these many cool cars in one spot in Fukui.

Better to just enjoy the pictures…

It might have been called a Mazda Cosmo Show, with about a half-dozen pristine examples…

Are MR2s old enough to be considered a “classic” already? Man, I ‘m getting old…

Okay, this is just ridiculous. NSXs are not classics. But they sure are still gorgeous. — Okay, this is just ridiculous. NSXs are **not** classics. But they sure are still gorgeous.

This was perhaps my favorite car of the show… a Daihatsu Mira. While most may think it’s pretty pedestrian, given that it used to be an extremely common car (well, the newer ones still are a dime-a-dozen), this one was bought new by one owner ever since 1986. The car remains in superb condition and he has quite a few photos to prove his travels around the country… He even still has the original window sticker! One has to appreciate the love he has for his car.

The remainder of the parking lot was no less exciting…

A few exotics made a showing, like this 458.

As you can tell, I have a bit of an affinity for an old Fairlady Z.

There were plenty of other cars in attendance, but I couldn’t possibly upload them all! Let me know if a car catches your eye, I’ll upload more if anyone requests.

Now that it’s spring soon, I’m looking forward to this years’ event! I hope to see you there!

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

January 28, 2020 by William Tjipto in Photography, Reviews

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 ] Prime Lens

January 20, 2020 by William Tjipto in Cameras, Photography

For nearly 9 years, I used two kit lenses for all my photography needs, as they provide enough focal ranges for all the pictures I needed. In the past year or so, I’ve started to slowly realize that my pictures lacked a certain quality that separates great photos from my mediocre ones. My photos, while not terrible IMO, weren’t “special.” Not to mention numerous photos taken inside dark gyms always were a little noisy, dark, or blurry, tripod or not. I don’t know how I used my camera for so many years strictly on “automatic” without knowing more about what other dial options, ISO, shutter speed, or f-stop meant.

When my Nikon started to have shutter issues a bit longer than a year ago (has it been that long already?), I did a bit of research on cameras and fell deep (...so deep…) into the rabbit hole of photography. I essentially had to start from scratch, trying to make sense of all these terms and most importantly, how I can take better pictures.

The world of photography is quite vast. Even with months of reading, researching, and a bit of experimentation, I realize I am an absolute amateur and I still know nothing. It is exactly the Dunning-Kruger Effect; the more you know the more you realize you don’t.

Wading through this information, time and time again, I heard an oft repeated recommendation to start off with a “prime lens” in order to truly learn how to take great pictures. Prime lenses only have one focal length, forcing the user to move closer or further to reframe the shot. This might help in understanding positioning, getting better angles and more interesting shots. Though honestly, this sounds like more work to me.

So why would one bother? Prime lenses can capture that elusive, beautiful blurred boke / bokeh.

This also means it lets in a lot of light allowing for brighter pictures with lower ISO, generating less noise and sharper images. Who knew that f-stop meant so much?

So all these benefits of prime lenses are great to be sure, but the lower cost APS-C ones, around $200 USD or less, are often manual focus, manual aperture, and often lack electronic sensors for file data. From there, lenses around $200 and up may have auto-focus, but sadly, often lack any lens built-in stabilization with cheaper third-party lenses. For hand-held shots, this can make a big difference, worth a couple of stops. And, again, they only have one focal length!

But when shots are this beautiful…

…nothing else matters.

[ Photography ] Sony NEX-5 Mirrorless Review

January 08, 2020 by William Tjipto in Cameras, Japan, Photography, Reviews

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.

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

Sony 18-55 F3.5-5.6

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.

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.

Mackerel for Charity! Obama City Daini JHS Pop-Up Charity Shop

May 01, 2019 by William Tjipto in Japan

Hello, everyone! We are Japanese junior high school students from Obama City in Fukui.

We will go to Tokyo on a school trip for 3 days to advertise Obama City. We are going to sell food and goods from Obama at Daikokuya in Asakusa in Tokyo.

Obama is famous for sea food, especially saba. Saba is mackerel in English. Saba is very healthy and popular in Japan now. We will sell food like canned and grilled saba from Obama.

Obama is also famous for chopsticks. You can experience making chopsticks by yourselves on that day. I hope everyone will buy them!

We also want to help many people around the world. So this is a charity event! Please come to our shop and buy food from Obama!

We are looking forward to meeting you. See you!

Please visit our Mackerel for Charity! Facebook Events Page!
https://www.facebook.com/events/299188077680191/

私たちは福井県小浜市出身の日本人中学生です。
小浜市の宣伝のために3日間修学旅行で東京に行きます。

私たちは東京の浅草で小浜からの商品を売るつもりです。

小浜はシーフード、特にさばで有名です。
マカレルは英語で言うとサバです。
サバは今とても健康的で日本で人気があります。
私たちは、小浜の缶詰や焼きサバ寿司を販売します。
小浜市はお箸でも有名です。
あなたはその日、自分で箸を作る経験をすることができます。
みんなが買ってくれることを願っています。
私たちはまた、世界中の多くの人々を助けたいです。
これはチャリティーイベントです。
私たちの店に来て、小浜で食べ物を買ってください。
私たちはあなたに会えるのを楽しみにしています。
じゃあね。

フェイスブックイベント情報

The above was written by my awesome students in their words. I want them to show what they can do and challenge themselves to speak in English outside our school environment in a natural and very real setting: a charity shop! They will learn fantastic skills and invaluable experience on their school trip and proudly share our local products. And hopefully have a lot of fun doing so!

100% of all proceeds will be donated to charity. (We are finalizing the local charity, so as soon as it's done, I'll link the relevant information.)

Please share and spread the word! I hope to see you there! Thank you very much!

Our school, Obama Daini Junior High School:
http://edu.city.obama.fukui.jp/obama-j2/

Allow me to introduce our school, Obama Daini Junior High School. Established in 1955, we are a public junior high school with about 500 students and 40 teachers and various support staff. We are also commonly called, “Nichu,” which means “second junior high school” of the city.

This year, our third grade students will visit Tokyo soon this may for their school trip. While it is only for three days, they will have plenty of fun and educational activities scheduled. One of which, of course, is this pop-up shop on Wednesday, May 15th! Mark it on your calendars!

P.S. I have full permission by staff and guardians to publicly share these photos and videos.