where is grumpy old man?

sighted in ayase a month ago. watching muay thai has adverse effects. actual muay thai pictures to follow. i hope...

you can check jono's pics in the meantime.

築地

wandered around tsukiji while waiting for our favorite sushi shop finish their periodic maintenance. this guy was busy hauling some crates to his shop even though the market was closed on this day.

(the colors came out somewhat different than what i see in aperture... should be greener and darker)

梅雨

it's rainy season again. saw this guy looking at something. i don't remember now if he was looking at a map trying to find his way or trying to decide what drink to get in front of a vending machine. (i passed by this place again and saw it was an area map he was looking at.) actually, i first thought his eyes were closed, was drunk and trying to fight off a bad headache, but when i looked closer, he was actually staring at whatever it was in front of him. and i think he knew i took his picture because right after, he lowered his umbrella covering his face.

something i have to keep in mind with the way rangefinders work... while i tried to frame this so that there is space between the guy and that thing to the right, i forgot that what i was viewing is not through the lens (unlike an SLR) thus the shot ending up less than ideal. oh well...

monday blues

it's monday again tomorrow. i was told off to come on time, so i have to leave the house earlier than "normal"... =(
taking the train is such a pain now since we moved to the "new" office. i have to change trains thrice and endure these crazily packed trains. (before, i was able to sit, and sleep all the way till my stop.)
i was planning to make a series of my daily commute. i still have to get shots of people running to change to the other train line, not to mention people being pushed in just to be able to close the train doors. crazy...

developments

been busy lately with other things... been wanting to post this for 2 weeks, now i think the excitement has died.

anyway, i finally gave in. this is from my first self-developed roll. (note to self : may 9) tim and jono must be sniggering they have a new convert. now just waiting for ken's turn...

i still think it is too cumbersome to do it. it is still much easier to just drop it off some lab, though it does cost less, and you don't have to wait for several days to get your film back.

i have developed 6 other rolls since. i'll post some when i get the time to scan them. a lot of them were underexposed though, not because i made a mistake in developing, but more on my laziness to rely on auto exposure from the camera, rather than exposing manually.

abandoned

i found this abandoned apartment about a month ago in tsukishima while waiting for friends. i wanted to explore more but was scared some homeless guy would just come out of one of the doors. maybe next time when the sun is up...

0 . 9 5 (れい てん きゅう ご)

note: got this lens off an auction a bit more than a month ago. was shocked to see a lot of fungus on the lens. (i know i shouldn't trust the dodgy description on auction sites but still fell for it.) had it immediately brought to some 'camera lab' to have it cleaned and modified to M mount. they originally estimated 2 months, but was surprised to get a call 1 month early (reminder to self : apr 29) they couldn't take away all the fungus traces, but i think they did a very good job cleaning it.

this was shot a day after i got it. i shot some with film on the 1st day but i still don't have it back. the lens performs better than i expected. i think it is sharp enough. (the picture here is a bit out of focus though. focus is more on the nose rather than the eye, but this is the one which captures the old man's expression most with the shots i took of him.)

blog: i wanted to try this lens at night where it works best, so decided to walk to higashi-ginza after work. i chanced upon this old man along the main street of ginza. there were 2 of them actually. the other one was a middle-aged woman, who i initially thought was the main performer, but she called this old man sensei (teacher)... this old man (muraoka-san, name printed on the cd he was selling) was very nice. i think he talked more than he played. =) (i also think his cd is not worth the 2,000 yen he is selling it for. you should just listen to him live whenever you chance upon him) (btw, i walked all the way to shiodome to catch my train home. around twice the distance of my original plan, for those not familiar with tokyo.)

additional note: somehow i like the sound of how they say the aperture value in japanese: れい てん きゅう ご (rei ten kyuu go)