Big mountain part two

(the continuation of part one which you can find here)

Having arrived at the summit sooner than I’d expected, I had time for a break. I found a nice spot and enjoyed the view for a while. While hiking up the mountain there were some spots in the shade where some snow remained from the night before. It’s really starting to get winterish. Well, in the shade, anyway. At the summit the temperate was just perfect with the sun shining brightly on all the people taking a break at the top. I took off my jacket for a while and sat there, eating the ‘big mountain nuts’ that I bought at the bottom of the mountain.

Exploring the area a bit I came across this tree, which has snow on it on the shadow side, and nice and greenon the sunny side. It was quite difficult to take a good picture of it though, and I’m not 100% happy with the result. Oh well. After I slowly began to freeze to death I decided to head down again. Since I’ve climbed OoYama every year since I came to Japan four years ago I decided to take a different path down. Just 100 meters below the summit there’s a junction that will either take you back down to where you came from, or alternatively it will take you along the far side of the mountain (the Fuji size) to a place called Yabitsu pass, which eventually ends up in Hadano, a city not too far away from Atsugi where I live. It proved to be an interesting path indeed…

To be continued!

Work

Today I was in a meeting for such a long time that I even wished I was developing in Objective-C.

…

(Ah, so THAT’s why they invented twitter!)

 

 

Achievements

Winter is starting to make itself known here in Atsugi, but it’s not quite succeeding yet. One day it’s freezing cold, the next day the sun is shining and I can walk outside in just a t-shirt. Autumn and winter are when every important thing happens in my life. Biggest example of this is of course my coming to Japan, but there are numerous other events that happened in winter. For years now I’ve been stuck in the same cycle, where cool stuff happens in winter, which makes me feel happy for months until the golden week in May, and after that nothing interesting at all happens for the rest of the year. I’m sure it has to do with the yearly pattern enforced upon us by the weather and the fiscal year. In any case, experiencing the onset of yet another winter in the same place makes me think about what I really achieved since I came here. Yup, it’s one of those ‘Sunday-night-at-2AM-the-brain-can’t-stop-working” topics.

But it’s a rather short topic really, because I haven’t achieved much at all. On a global level at least. On a personal level I’ve taught myself a lot of stuff, and I’m very happy to have seen and done so many things during my travels. But all of that will disappear when I die. As for things that I’ve contributed to this world, or the human race as a whole, there’s not much I can be proud of. At my job I’ve done a lot of stuff related to speech recognition, and I’ve developed a lot of software that could potentially be useful on the short term, but I wouldn’t say that my work is unique or vital to the development of a better speech recognition system. Ultimately it’s work that other people either don’t need or have already done themselves. Despite that, my work gave me the chance to improve my skills as a programmer, and I’m very proud of that. But that’s not exactly ‘giving back’ to the community.

If I had to list the achievements that I was most proud of in terms of value for others on the long term, then I would probably put this blog and the photos it contains at the top of the list. Which puts things into perspective, because I don’t want my single best accomplishment in life to be this blog. It’s decidedly un-engineer-y to favor my amateur photographic results over my professional programming knowledge, which is what I use to make a living. I guess in role-playing-game terms I’m like a swordsman who uses magic spells instead of his sword. To continue the analogy, right now I feel like I’m just leveling up my skills to face the end boss at the end of the level.

Back to the point: what have you done that could potentially benefit others? Did you ever make other smile? How? And did you do it my using the same skills you use to earn money? Or was it something else? And if it was something else, do you believe your career path is correct, or would you rather switch? All of these questions make it seem as if I would consider a career in photography, but that’s really not true. I think I can contribute more to the world as a programmer than as a photographer, and part of the reason why I think that way is because of all the time that I spent studying and practicing the art of programming over the years. I guess I’m just wondering when I will get a chance to make it pay off as much as photography.

Please don’t blame me if this post is incoherent. I am only half conscious. And I don’t know which half.

Big mountain

Last Monday I was absolutely determined to climb Mount OoYama, the mountain closest to Atsugi. Unfortunately it rained that day and I stayed at home. That night I vowed to climb it the next day, but somewhere during the night my determination faltered, and I somehow managed to change my alarm clock from 8AM to 11AM during my sleep. I managed to wake up before my alarm went off at around 10:30, and I was thoroughly annoyed when I looked out the window. A beautiful day. Sucks to stay at home and procrastinate on a beautiful day, so I decided to go anyway. I went by bicycle to Isehara, a 30 minutes ride. From there I took the bus to the big mountain and I was halfway to the top at 12:00. Thanks to the cable car, of course. I suck at climbing.

This was the first time that I climbed the mountain alone. I still feel a vague uneasiness when it comes to going into ‘the wild’ alone. After all, what if a bear attacks you or you break a leg, and there’s no help? Well, the wild in Japan is not so wild, and although there are supposed to be bears I’ve never seen one. I started to climb with confidence, and that confidence only increased after I remembered that a large amount of elderly Japanese people climb the mountain by themselves. It’s amazing how energetic old Japanese people are. At the age that Dutch people will usually start to get heart attacks the Japanese climb mountains as if they were twenty years old. Well, Holland has no mountains anyway. Hah!

It was an incredibly clear day, and you could see not just Enoshima, but also the peninsula of Yokosuka behind it, and even Chiba across the Tokyo bay. It’s a brilliant view, and I really can never get enough of it. The view from the other side of the mountain was not bad either, with a steaming Fuji-san greeting me from afar.

I managed to reach the top in less than an hour, which is a new personal record for me, I’m sure. Since I have a lot more photos to show I decided to split up this report in a couple of posts instead. In other words: To Be Continued…

 

Random Oume trip

It took about 10 minutes to change from sleep mode to cycle-to-the-station mode, that Saturday. It was a four day weekend, and I was thoroughly bored. I like random plans, but if your ‘default’ random plan consists of cycling or hiking then even the random things are no longer random. So I did what I had wanted to do ever since I came to Japan, but seldom had a chance to do. Take a train somewhere. Get out somewhere. Take pictures. Anywhere will do. After loading a map of the Japanese train and subway network onto my camera (no, I don’t have a smart-phone yet…) I was on my way. To Oume.

I figured that the most interesting train lines are the local lines that don’t connect to another line when they end. After glancing on my map I determined that I had to head north for Hachioji, and from there on even farther north. I changed my mind about the ‘final’ destination a couple of times along the way, but when I arrived at Haijima I decided to take the Oume line all the way to the end.

Well, that was the plan, but somewhere in the middle of the line the train stopped at Oume and I had to transfer. That is, if I wanted to wait 30 minutes for the next train. I didn’t, so I went out and explored Oume. And it was a peculiar town. Located near a river, the walk from the station to the riverside was a steep downhill walk. Along the way I encountered the typical sights you’d otherwise see in any Japanese town. In the 1960s.

For some reason there were posters of old movies everywhere. It made the whole town have a very retro feel to it. This, plus the fact that there were barely any people to be seen, even on busy streets, made it a bit of a peculiar experience. It felt like a ghost town.

Note the awesome Metropolis poster. For some reason I had just read the wiki article about the movie the night before, so I was awesomeified by this coincidence.

Unfortunately I woke up rather late, and it was getting cloudy and dark, so I cut my visit short and went on my way back. I made some unexpected detours along the way just for the sake of it, but none of it was as interesting as the 60s movie town of Oume. Before leaving Oume I took some photos near the river side. Nice river.

Lastly, here’s some more awesome movie posters. Nothing could ever be as awesome as a cowboy ninja shooting his two guns while riding a horse.

I have to admit this trip was a bit too random. The next time I do such a thing I’ll at least make sure to wake up a bit earlier so that I’ll have more time to look around. Random train trips are difficult, because destinations like Oume are at least 2 hours away by train. Still, they’re fun every once in a while. It was good to feel the sense of exploration again. Japan always has an interesting surprise waiting for you. Like this Gundam flower shop.

S90 addendum

Last weekend I had some time to go out and play with the S90, which I mini-reviewed a couple of posts back. I’ll report on the trips later, but before that I wanted to share my impression of the S90 after using it ‘in the field’. One of the trips was a mountain hiking trip on which I didn’t bring my 50D. The other trip was by train, and I brought the big cam as well. I didn’t use it. Part of the reason was that the weather wasn’t exactly glorious, and neither were the sights along the way, so I never really felt the need to try to take a better photo of something. The S90 sufficed in every case.

Seems average so far, but the interesting bit happened when it started to become dark. Usually that’s when the weakness of compact cameras comes to light. Not this one though. I kept on shooting outside during dusk, hand-held. The IS worked great. Forget about the low-light mode though, the image quality is just too poor. I’d rather risk taking three or five shots at a slower shutter speed at a higher quality setting. One of them will turn out well.

I should note that the exposure meter is rather shit during dusk. This is no news to me cause it’s always been shit on Canon compacts, but it might surprise people who actually expect this to work. In my case I frequently use an exposure compensation of -1 or lower to make decent shots at dusk time.

One of the tricks I use with my 50D when taking HDR photos without a tripod is to switch the camera mode to high-speed continuous shooting. This, combined with IS and high shutter speeds, usually results in three photos that are either perfectly aligned or can be adjusted easily (and automatically) by software. During my hiking trip I came across some sights that I thought would look great as HDR photos, so I tried the same trick on the S90. Definitely a bad idea. For one thing, the ‘high-speed’ mode is still too slow to make the photos align perfectly, and you’ll see some artifacts. What’s worse is that you really can’t use high ISO values for HDR shots, cause the noise shows up very clearly when mixing the photos together. It’s not an area where compact cameras are very good performers, and not even the S90 can change that. Forget about hand-held HDR photography with this one. Then again, only crazy people would try such a thing anyway.

I should note that the S90 has its own dynamic range improvement setting called (iShitYouNot) iContrast. I turned it on during the hiking trip to see if it’s any good, but I didn’t really make a fair comparison with iContract on versus off.  Looking at the photos I shot with iContract on I didn’t notice any nastiness, but opinions on the net seem divided on this one. In my case I only shot landscapes and trees, which might be just the thing that iContrast can improve on. I wonder if it works just as well on people, though..

One last thing I have to mention here is the speed of the software. Specifically the start-up time and the time it takes for the buttons to respond again after taking a photo. It’s too long. Way too long for comfort. After taking a photo it shows up on the display quite quickly. Then I review the photo, notice that the exposure was not so good, say a bit overexposed perhaps. I immediately grab the exposure compensation dial and start rotation it, but nothing happens! The camera doesn’t return to shooting mode at all. First I have to half-press the shutter button to get rid of the photo review screen, and then I _still_ have to wait a while before the buttons start to respond. It’s the same thing for the zoom lever and the lens control ring. This is a minor annoyance that I would never even notice if I didn’t like this camera so much. I just wanted to mention it here so other potential buyers know what they can expect.

Summarizing, the S90 is a lovely little camera. I’ve never used a compact camera better than this one, but there’s still some minor annoyances. I won’t let that bother me from taking a lot of photos with it.

Lastly, here’s three different pictures taken with the S90, unedited. I chose these photos in particular because they also show the less good parts of the camera (and of the photographer, but that’s a whole other story )

ISO 80, F/4.5, 1/500s

ISO400, f/8.0, 1/10s

ISO200, f/8.0, 1/400s

Update: I’ve been playing with the iContrast a bit, and it seems to have a tendency to lighten everything in the photo, and in the case of the photos I tried it with, it lightened them too much for my liking. I wonder if this might be the reason why I though the light metering was a bit off during dusk time. If that was when the iContrast kicked on that might explain why most of the pictures I got during dusk time were too bright. I’ll keep it turned off during the next sunset and see how it goes..