On Day Two of the new-camera-in-Tokyo trail let’s move gradually from people to geometry. Because any city has lots of that.


This is from the 20th floor, at Hitotsubashi University looking down over the Mainichi building; in the background are some of the Imperial Palace gardens (more to come from there). I said “gradually” and yep, if you blow this up you will in fact spot a few people.

I wonder what the guys on the rooftop are up to; on a really big screen with the full-rez photo, it’s clear that they’re pretty well-dressed, i.e. probably not maintenance folk. Maybe they just stepped outside for a smoke.

View over Mainichi into the Imperial Palace gardens

There’s this thing I keep saying about the X-E1 and how nicely it handles pictures of big objects with lots of details. See?

I had to do a bit of photoprocessing because at the top of the photo, the pollution had really bleached out the buildings and trees. So Lightroom’s brush tool came in very handy in applying some contrast-and-blacks boost.


This is a grungy canal in the same neighborhood; I liked the reflections and light rays. I wonder what, if anything, lives in these central-city canals? Given Tokyo’s pervasive drinking problem I bet citizens fall in regularly. My skin crawls at the thought.

Canal in Chiyoda

I wanted to freeze the ripples so I twisted the shutter-speed dial but didn’t look closely enough so ended up with 1/500. To compensate, the camera picked F1.4 and ISO 400. I would probably boosted the ISO for more DoF but, well anyhow, the other thing I’ve said a few times now that this is a forgiving little handful of metal and glass.



Contributions

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From: Masatake (Eddie) Hori (Mar 10 2013, at 10:43)

Welcme to Tokyo! Long time reader, and first time to comment. I noticed the pictures of canals and wanted to contribute.

As you have suspected, fish is not abundant in that river which is called the Nihonbashi-kawa. There's still a long way to go until it is clean again.

In the meantime, we enjoy riding our boat on that canal to admire the architecture of the highway that is built over it.

Sample photo: http://goo.gl/WIPQO

Its very unusual for a highway this long to be built entirely over a river. Something that you can only see in Tokyo, I suppose.

Those buildup of rocks in the top of your photo is actually a part of the Edo-castle. From the river, you can see the 500 year layer of history that we live on top of.

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From: Jacek Kopecky (Mar 10 2013, at 13:38)

Eddie, your photo is private, did you want to make it public?

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From: Masatake (Eddie) Hori (Mar 10 2013, at 17:37)

Oops, fixed the permission!

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From: Tim (Mar 10 2013, at 21:40)

Hey @Eddie, cool pix. What kind of boat? BTW, I went on a boat cruise in Matsue a few years ago. No highways :)

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March 08, 2013
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