Random photos of stations I have visited

[mojo]

I've got one I took at night, but the sky is too bright and I'm having trouble fixing it. Maybe it can't be fixed... It's a nice shot though, I only wish I had taken a step forward to get the bollards out of the frame.

 

This is what I have right now, you can see the leaves are messed up where I tried to fix the sky:

 

 

It needs more light and contrast, but also less... And some fix for that bright spot on the left. And better cropping, and straightening up...

[JR East]

On the two quite same picture of the platform and tracks, you've a significant difference in white balance (first colder than second)

 

I don't know what is your phone, but usually, you can steer the white balance. cold colors (going to "blue") = low white balance (4500 K), warm colors (going to orange, yellow, red) = high white balance (5500 K / 6500 K). 

Usually, you can also steer the aperture (f/) and focal point.

 

For the one at night it's always quite complicated. Usually, you've to combine an under exposed picture (for having lamps not super white) and an over exposed for the remaining part of the picture. 

Edited March 20 by JR East

[mojo]

I have a Pixel 8 Pro, capturing to RAW. The white balance difference is because I changed it in darktable. The JPEGs out of the camera are consistent, Google does a good job even though one is the primary camera and one is the ultrawide. They are both 50 MP sensors, but the primary is a newer Sony model that can capture multiple exposures at once, instead of consecutively. It seems to improve night photos a bit, and does wonders for night video.

 

I am trying to learn a bit, but I mostly point and shoot TBH. One thing I should do is enable the 16:9 guide lines because I often forget to frame stuff for displays.

 

I should spend more time taking photos too, or looking for good things to photograph. My Hard Off addiction makes it difficult, I'm always rushing to the next one or trying to do "maintenance" tasks like, you know, eating. I've been wondering if I could improve that by better understanding timetables, so I'm not worried about stopping for half an hour ending up costing me much more time because I missed the train/bus. Google Maps does have a feature where you can set your departure time.

 

 

Orange are the ones I visited this time, 145 in total. Problem is I want to re-visit all the ones I have been to because they always have different stuff, but at the same time want to get in as many new ones as possible. Next time I need to spend longer in Nagoya, and find a way to deal with bulkier stuff.

[Gunzel]

145! Wow! How many days were you in Japan to visit 145 HARD OFFs?

 

Are the stars versus the circles significant? Or is the Google Maps bundling multiple pins into one marker? Have you been to the blue ones as well on previous trips?

[mojo]

8 hours ago, Gunzel said:

145! Wow! How many days were you in Japan to visit 145 HARD OFFs?

 

Are the stars versus the circles significant? Or is the Google Maps bundling multiple pins into one marker? Have you been to the blue ones as well on previous trips?

 

36 days total... I was supposed to use some more holiday up that year, but various things prevented it from happening. I can see this year going the same way...

 

The green ones are ones I visited back over the 2022/23 new year, but most have been overwritten by the orange ones. The stars are ones that are particularly good or had something particularly interesting. They aren't complete though, I need to go through and re-do them. Some of the finds were incredible... A working, original Breakout cocktail machine, for example.

 

I was doing 5 shops a day on average, with some days where I had other things going on, and others were I was able to go to even more in a single day.

 

I try to photograph every one, but sometimes I forget.

 

[Gunzel]

Five per day is very impressive, especially on public transport, I’d struggle to see how you can improve much on that by doing extensive timetable research beforehand. 
 

How long do you spend in each one? I usually allow about an hour when I’m planning things out. It’s a struggle to really give the JUNK section a good going over in an hour, and I’ve given up on some things (cameras and lenses, RAM, loose games, unboxed expansion cards…) as too time consuming and just give them a cursory going over. 

[mojo]

20 hours ago, Gunzel said:

Five per day is very impressive, especially on public transport, I’d struggle to see how you can improve much on that by doing extensive timetable research beforehand. 
 

How long do you spend in each one? I usually allow about an hour when I’m planning things out. It’s a struggle to really give the JUNK section a good going over in an hour, and I’ve given up on some things (cameras and lenses, RAM, loose games, unboxed expansion cards…) as too time consuming and just give them a cursory going over. 

 

You are probably right, there aren't big time savings available. I have been thinking of renting a car so I can take in even more, but the downside is I'd miss out on all the places I wouldn't otherwise go. Maybe I could use a car for the hard to access ones, or the ones I have visited a couple of times before. That said, with the cost of renting a car and the time taken to cover longer distances, it's often cheaper and faster to just get on the train, and then get a taxi. The issue is then getting back to the station... I need to investigate taxi apps. Normally I just walk back, which is rarely more than 30 minutes and usually less, or get a bus if there is one.

 

Walking does me some good.

 

I generally spend as long as I feel I need to. Depends how big they are, what they have. What would help is if I could see a range of potential leaving times for different public transport options to my next stop, or even to a range of potential next stops. It's often not obvious which is the best store to go to next, and sometimes ones that look close end up taking a long time to get to.

 

Anyway, an hour is probably typical for a medium size store with good stuff. I too struggle with the junk, partly because it is quite physically demanding and I have health issues. Laserdiscs are the worst for that, they are so heavy and they almost always put them right at the bottom where they are hardest to reach.

 

I tend to narrow it down to a few boxes that potentially have stuff I want, but I'm sure I miss out on some great bargains because of that. Of course it's hit and miss but I've had some excellent stuff from there.

[Gunzel]

I think as you get to less populous areas a car would become more valuable, I doubt you'd be able to keep up five a day though. For instance my favourite HARD OFF PC Niigata Koshin is 7 minutes walk from the nearest bus, and that bus is 10 minutes walk from the nearest station, or a transfer from a second bus from Niigata station. This turns 25 minutes in a car into 60-90 minutes, if the timing is right, and potentially a lot longer if it isn't. I've used taxis a couple of times, but they do add up pretty quickly, and as you said, what happens when you want to leave? Taxis are pretty common at Japanese stations, but not so much at HARD OFFs. I think I read that Uber has now been legalised in some fashion in Tokyo and perhaps a few other cities so hopefully that will help the app situation as well.

 

I've just bought a couple of things via the HARD OFF Net Mall via Buyee, but it's a bit of a pain, the turnaround times are long, Buyee are unable to order multiple things from multiple shops in one go, I guess because of their internal processes, and if something was popular you'd likely lose it, I suspect mainly it's not because the online pricing does not seem particularly keen, and the range is relatively tiny (if anyone has used someone other than Buyee to order from HARD OFF and it's worked well please let me know).

 

Suruga-ya have free shipping this weekend again, and they have a reasonable number of LaserDiscs, not quite the Y110 of HARD OFF but when you factor in shipping not quite so bad. Though Tron is out of stock.　What disappoints me with Suruga-ya is the stuff they have on their Japanese site that just does not show up on their overseas site, I`d probably buy Star Wars LaserDisc but it's just not available on the international site.

 

I've bene watching a couple of Chinese guys on YouTube who have been live-streaming their road trip around Japan, including dropping in to HARD OFFs on their way. I'd love to do something similar with a van (and without the video camera) and be able to drop it all off to be shipped in a container home at the end of the trip, don't think that's likely to happen though.

 

[JR East]

@mojo As long as you're shooting in day light, a cellphone is enough. Where you need a "real" camera is "touchy"conditions where you've to play with aperture / speed / iso / exposure / focale. This is really making the difference.

The next big leap is the global shutter which can read the entire image in one go, rather than line-by-line on traditional sensors. It's available only on  Sony A9 III currently but I'm sure it'll be deployed by many other brands. This will be the main driver for changing my actual camera. This is of particular importance for railways photographers esp. when a train runs at high speed. You've a very good sample of the distorsion normal sensors are suffering of : https://www.dpreview.com/learn/6348932189/what-is-global-shutter

[mojo]

On 3/24/2024 at 9:03 AM, Gunzel said:

I think as you get to less populous areas a car would become more valuable, I doubt you'd be able to keep up five a day though. For instance my favourite HARD OFF PC Niigata Koshin is 7 minutes walk from the nearest bus, and that bus is 10 minutes walk from the nearest station, or a transfer from a second bus from Niigata station. This turns 25 minutes in a car into 60-90 minutes, if the timing is right, and potentially a lot longer if it isn't. I've used taxis a couple of times, but they do add up pretty quickly, and as you said, what happens when you want to leave? Taxis are pretty common at Japanese stations, but not so much at HARD OFFs. I think I read that Uber has now been legalised in some fashion in Tokyo and perhaps a few other cities so hopefully that will help the app situation as well.

 

 

There is S.Ride, Go, and Didi as well, but I've never tried any of them. Uber is operating in Japan now, but it's all with proper taxis and not private drivers.

 

I know what you mean about how missed connections can massively increase the time to takes to get to places. It's something I wish Google Maps was better at. If you look closely to does hint at how much you need to hurry, but also sometimes it gives you unrealistic transfer times e.g. because it looks like two lines are close to each other, but navigating the station takes longer.

 

The other reason to hire a car is for transporting heavy/bulky stuff to the Post Office. That could be done with a taxi too of course. Don't be afraid to ask the staff if they have any spare boxes, often they have plenty that were going to be recycled anyway, and surplus packing material.

 

 

2 hours ago, JR East said:

@mojo As long as you're shooting in day light, a cellphone is enough. Where you need a "real" camera is "touchy"conditions where you've to play with aperture / speed / iso / exposure / focale. This is really making the difference.

The next big leap is the global shutter which can read the entire image in one go, rather than line-by-line on traditional sensors. It's available only on  Sony A9 III currently but I'm sure it'll be deployed by many other brands. This will be the main driver for changing my actual camera. This is of particular importance for railways photographers esp. when a train runs at high speed. You've a very good sample of the distorsion normal sensors are suffering of : https://www.dpreview.com/learn/6348932189/what-is-global-shutter

 

Yeah, even with mighty Pixel 8 Pro has limitations for night photography. As I mentioned at the time, the Night Sight mode is incredible but also tends to make things look a bit too light, lighter than it is in real life. I need to experiment more with it, because maybe a RAW from Night Sight is better than a RAW from normal mode for developing.

 

I have an old m4/3 camera... A Panasonic that I forget the model number of. I wasn't very happy with it really, but I'm not much of an expert I'm definitely not getting the best from it. The Sony ones look nice, more or less point and shoot too which is what I want, but a bit expensive for an amateur like me. I was tempted to stretch to a Fuji x100v, but then they stopped making them and prices got silly. Despite the limitations of the P8P, the fact that I always have it on me and don't need to carry+charge a second device counts for a lot.

 

Seriously, my EDC is already on the heavy side.

 

- Phone

- Wallet with cash, credit cards, and loyalty cards

- Passport (legally required!)

- Hohem iSteady XE gimbal

- Mobile battery

- Charging cable

- Wet wipes (junk tends to be a bit dusty)

- Glasses wipes (Muji)

 

Sometimes I bring a small 20W charger too (Anker I think). I might look for a smaller mobile battery too. The one I have is 10Ah and I only use about 3Ah on most days, but it's the times when I forget to charge or the charge doesn't work for some reason... If more places had 100v outlets I could ditch it entirely, and that might encourage me to stop to take a break more often too.

 

And really, the output of the P8P often looks stunningly good even at night. I'm just no good at framing things or fixing the minor issues with them. Anything that comes out looking good is a fluke.

[Gunzel]

I think you’re doing pretty well. I have all that except the gimbal. Plus a Fuji X-T20 and a couple of lenses and an umbrella. On a sunny day I might pack the Cosina CT-1A and some of the dwindling stock of Ektachrome 64 Professional I’ve had on ice as well.

I like the Fuji because the ClassicChrome film emulation is pretty good and spits out JPEGs I’m not tempted to play with, I didn’t enjoy the darkroom back in the day and I don’t enjoy and am not good at the digital darkroom either, so a slide equivalent is perfect for me. If only it could also cost a dollar or two a shot like slides do that may focus my mind on taking better photos as well. 

 

Saying all that the iPhone takes the great bulk of all the photos even though they are less satisfying when they are up on the big screen. They generally look pretty good on the iPhone screen until you zoom in. 

 

i haven’t braved the post office yet. I wish Buyee had a service where I could send them takyubin from the hotel with all the receipts and they could pack it all in with the other stuff I send. For non bulky stuff their DHL rates are much better than EMS from the post office. 

[mojo]

Takyubin is surprisingly reasonable in terms of cost.

 

I wonder if you could ask the shop to keep the item for you until the courier collects it? They would probably want to see that you have the collection booked and paid for first, and that seems to be a bit of an issue with Yamato. They have a web page for requesting collection, but it seems to be an enquiry form rather than an actual booking. Maybe the Japanese site is better, I only looked at their English one.

 

Japan Post can collect as well (https://mgr.post.japanpost.jp/C20P02Action.do?ssoparam=0&termtype=2). I have not tried it, but maybe next time I might try it to save carting stuff from the hotel to the post office. Even better would be collection from the shop.

 

I guess the other problem with shop collection will be that they need a phone number. And in Hard Off's case probably an address in Japan, since they need one for you to sell anything to them.

[Gunzel]

Takyubin is amazing for what it does and the price, it can make life a lot easier. I suspect I would struggle to get it set up in a HARD OFF because of my non-existent Japanese but it is usually pretty easy to do in a hotel and the reception will arrange everything and usually can supply boxes and packing material.

 

Looking around my office/workshop at the moment though perhaps I can't really afford to bring back any more things from Japan than I can fit in my normal suitcase 🙂

 

[mojo]

 

 

These are what I need for the junk section. I actually seriously thought about bringing some knee pads or something.

[cteno4]

Yeah I think I have permanent heel dents in my buttocks.

 

jeff