Before Bed

So I'm off to have a nap now, but before I do I thought I'd share the low quality scans of the pictures I took with my brand new (enormous) film camera.

There is one portrait that came out nicely, but the rest were a bit 'meh.'  They were, in fact, very 'meh,' so here they are for your viewing (dis)pleasure!

Plants are often viewed as being colourful and therefore people think they require colour photographs to do them justice.
Trees on the other hand...

Of course they are black and white, because I have a digital camera for the colour stuff.

That aside, as these are the low quality scans the quality will be comparable to any .jpg created by a low end digital camera, or by scans from 35mm saved as .jpg

The benefit comes when I want to get one of the negatives blown up really big like.

That's not entirely the whole story though - the feel of medium format is slightly different and, for mine, gives a slightly ethereal quality to some of the pictures.  Not all of them of course, but on the occasions when you get it just right, there's a style that you can't replicate elsewhere.

This plant seemed to be rather old and was definitely shapely enough that a decent picture should have come out of it; I just couldn't find the angle this time.

Exactly one picture in this series has something approaching that feeling.

I'll leave it up to you to decide which one you think it is.  It might well be wishful thinking on my part, and you might decide none of them have 'it.'

The water is so featureless - it'd be an alright picture if there was a skyscraper reflected in it.

I won't disagree if you think these aren't very inspiring, but look at them as a proof of concept.  I mostly figured out how to use the camera!

There's a title about driftwood or bare branches or something here.

I also learned that hand holding it viable if you have decent light, and even if you don't have tons of light you can still walk away with a picture or two despite the weight of the thing.

Divine Headquarters

I don't usually bother editing .jpg's because for every edit there's bound to be a loss of information in the resulting file and I'm habitually saving over old files by mistake (decades of using computers has taught me to save without thinking, which in this case is inadvisable!).  But in this instance I made an exception because I wanted to emphasise the rays peaking over the top of the building.

The camera works.  I figured out how to use it.  There's still half a roll left in the camera waiting to be used up somewhere before I throw another roll in.  That contains the rest of this load of pictures (in truth there are only 2 shots left in that enormous monster so I need to pick up some more film) and a couple of test shots I took to check the film still wound after I dropped the bloody thing (clumsy bastard).

It took a couple of weeks for the film to come back but it was nice to pick it up.  It's like a Christmas present because you forget you put it in to be processed and a week later it's there to be picked up!

My Biggest Fan

So after the game against Secom I met the sponsors of IBM (besides the company itself) who had turned up for the big game at the national stadium (Chichibunomiya).  Those guys aside, I also met my biggest fan - click here to see.

My second biggest fan was this girl and her parents, along with her friends.

The youngster was practically thrown at me as we were leaving.

The woman on the right is the wife of one of our props, an exceptionally nice guy (as seems to be the case with the tight five in any team) who writes his own blog about food in Japan.  Occasionally he writes about boxing, but seeing as boxing is a dying art and food will never be so, there's a lot more to write about in the world of cakes than the ring.

Purely as an academic exercise as to how often and how much he writes, here is his blog:

http://ameblo.jp/shimoyaman2009/

It's incredible how much he writes.  Of course I can't tell you how good the content is or if his foodie credentials are up to snuff, but I assume through sheer force of volume, he has at least figured a few things out about noodles.

As another purely academic exercise (although this one involves some pictures) here is the blog I stole the picture of me from:

http://ameblo.jp/emifit/entry-11944727753.html

I include this because it has a number of pictures of the team, and the stadium, and from a neutral perspective it might be interesting to see the scale of the place and some other faces in the team - to gain a context for IBM rugby and the league we play in.

It's also my intention to write a review of the recent books I've finished.  The lack of sleep decimates critical thinking, but does wonders for working through backlogs of books.

To try and trigger a google search, here are the names of the books I've recently gone through:

The Hobbit

(The) Silmarillion

Ancillary Justice

Revelation Space

London Falling

So as per my usual timetable, those reviews will be up this time next year.

IBM vs Secom

So we played a company team called Secom at the weekend.

They were in the same position as us in having lost their previous games, so both teams were battling to keep out of the bottom two.  The last two in the league have to play relegation matches against the top two in the league below us.

We played in the national stadium in Japan with the Secom fans on one side, and our supporters on the other side.  Despite the relative emptiness of the stadium the noise and atmosphere were great.  They don't do the Japanese baseball thing of making up chants for the players (there's SO MUCH downtime in baseball, I guess the fans have to keep themselves amused somehow) but they get behind the action nonetheless.

The game was played at a thousand miles per hour and there were a lot of mistakes, particularly towards the end.

I don't know how far I ran (no fancy GPS units for us) but it felt like I ran gauntlet as I came out somewhat bruised.

Knocked six bells out of a couple of people and won a few turnovers which isn't really a wingers job, but I scored a try which makes up for the lack of attacking I did all game.  Kind of.

Next up is Shane Williams and Mitsubishi.  I think that's another away game?

Don't Even Bother Trying to Sleep

So for the past few days I've been experimenting with not sleeping.  Again.

It's a recurring theme in my life and one that I will fight against until the day I die.

During the many, many hours I've spent awake I've thought about any number of things, but instead of boring you with them I thought I'd share a picture I took with a film camera a couple of weeks ago.

It's not the enormous film camera I showed in the last post, it's just a normal 35mm camera of unknown origins.

A sunset, not a sunrise.  Despite the number of sunrises I've unwillingly been witness to, I've never found the strength of will to overcome the headaches and actually do something productive with a camera.

I like it, which is unsurprising because I'm showing it to the internet and I took it.  It's a very low quality scan (250kb) done by the photo place, and I don't have a print to see just how it would end up looking in the real world - but I really quite like it nonetheless.

I definitely suggest blowing it up to full size and just looking for a few seconds.  It grows on you.

At least it did with me.

The usual disclaimers with my insomniposts, I can't be held accountable for readability or spelling due to the fact my brain is eating itself instead of sleeping like a normal brain.

Oh and I almost forgot, I saw a cool train on Sunday:

Bought a Camera

So I bought a film camera.

I had some experience taking pictures with a 35mm film camera a couple of years ago, and it was really enjoyable.  I made a lot of mistakes and I didn't/don't really know what I was/am doing but not being able to edit a picture after the fact is completely different to the digital need to endlessly tinker.

As such, I bought a camera yesterday.

It cost 257.2958 British Pound Sterling 

at todays exchange rate.  That's for the body and the lens.

It also takes comedy sized film:

It's a really square thing and I half expected it to come with a cloth to put over my head and a stand on which to place it.

The camera on the left isn't mine, but it's also a film camera.  Just for the sense of scale.

I haven't had the chance to take it out for a spin, but the first 5 rolls  are black and white so if that isn't your bag I probably wouldn't bother coming back for the pictures out of this thing!  (At least for a while).