Tokyo Festival Pics

[David Noble]

Taken at the Awa Odori festival in the Tokyo neighborhood of Koenji last Saturday night. It has become a big event, kind of like Mardi Gras, with a parade over two nights of ten to fifteen thousand dancers and musicians and a crowd of about 125,000 spectators filling the shooping arcade and side streets around Koenji station. Quite an experience.

More pics here: http://nobleworks.zenfolio.com/p944408941/

Rangefinder purists may wish to avert their eyes from the first and last two photos in the gallery, which were taken with a Nikon DSLR (but a lens pioneered on the rangefinder, a 105/2.5). All the rest were taken with the Epson R-D1s and a CV 35/1.7 Ultron.

There are a lot of other Tokyo galleries on the site, probably 75% shot with the Epson and the others a mix of Nikon DSLR, Ricoh GRD, and Mamiya MF.

Enjoy!

 

[Finder]

Nice images. The Awa Odori is a recreation of the Awa Odori festival in Tokushima. The old name of Tokushima is Awa. Not only the dance, but the costumes have been copied.

 

[David Noble]

Thanks, Finder. Are you an old Japan hand as well?

 

[Finder]

I spent 16 years there. A bunch of them in Ogikubo just down the Chuo/Sobu line from Koenji.

 

[BJ Bignell]

Looks like a fun time! I'm very impressed by the colours; what's the lighting? It looks to be more or less just streetlights, maybe with some accesory lighting for the event.

 

[matt fury]

I like this picture a lot!

 

[David Noble]

Finder: Interesting. I have been living in Ogikubo, just off Kyokai Dori north of the station, for two years now. I have spent a total of ten years in Tokyo spread over the last twenty-five, all of it living in the area between Nakano and Ogikubo along the Chuo and Marunouchi lines.

BJ: It was a fun time! The Japanese know how to throw a party, which is not part of the standard image, but very true. A very joyful thing.

The lighting was tough; a mixture of fluorescent, tungsten, halogen and who knows what. Most of it just the normal street and shop lighting, but with some extra laid on for the event. Even so, I was having to shoot at ISO 1600 to get the shutter speed up to 125 (which is what the majority were shot at).

I think the Epson does great with high ISO, both in terms of color rendition and noise—much better than my Nikon, which is pretty bad above 800 and I don't normally like to use above 400. I think the Epson holds pretty well through 1600 if the shots aren't too underexposed.

 

[shadowfox]

Nice, my favorite is no.19

 

[BJ Bignell]

The lighting was tough; a mixture of fluorescent, tungsten, halogen and who knows what.

Well, you really nailed the colour balance in post-processing. Did you do any noise reduction?

 

[mangamonster]

Wow! I really enjoyed that!!

 

[jjcha]

Great picts! I really liked #12. Reminds me of how much fun it really is living in Tokyo.

Best,

-Jason

 

[David Noble]

Thanks BJ, Mr. Monster, and Jason.

I did no noise reduction whatsoever, which is one of the reasons I think the Epson is so good. All these were shot at 1600. Another factor is that they were all shot RAW and converted in Lightroom, which I think does a really good job of giving you a base image to work from. It has good tools for white balance and tonal correction and is easier to use than Photoshop. Only drawback is it doesn't give the range of finer editing tools (including masking, layers, etc.) that Photoshop does. I used Aperture for awhile, and I haven't seen its latest iteration, but felt Lightroom had better image-editing tools —and the real deal-breaker on Aperture was it does't support the Epson, while Lightroom does.