The Great Camera Review!

In importing this post from openoffice there were a number of formatting errors, as a result the following post is probably going to be all kinds of screwed up.  Sorry about that.

So in Japan there's a department store called Yodobashi camera. I don't know how to spell Yodobashi in Japanese, if I did I would write it here now. This begs the rather obvious question of how I know which store is Yodobashi, and which isn't. This is easily answered by a Japanese phenomenon I am going to call, 'jingle fever.'

It begins when you leave the airport on the first day, and continues until you leave the airport on your final day. I suspect however, that the jingles continue long into the memory. I know the final lines of the Yodobashi theme tune for example, and I've only been in there a few times to peruse their goods and buy a mouse.

Cute sells here, cute sells a lot of things. If porsche wrapped their latest hypercar in a fluffy hello kitty outfit and bought it here, they would sell out in seconds. 'It's okay dear, we can live in the car...' This barrage of cute doesn't stop at the visual and endorsement aspects of daily life, it also hits your eardrums. If eardrums could acquire plaque...

The train stations have a little jingle when a train is coming in, and when an announcement is being made. Every department store has its' own theme. The convenience stores here even have their own themes; seven 11s is particularly funny, as they manage to leverage the final three syllables of e-le-ven into a two syllable tune – becoming le-ven. Therefore, all Japanese people call se-ven e-le-ven, 'se-ven lev-en.' It makes me smile, no matter how many times I hear it.

So coming full circle to the beginning of this post; I can spot a Ydobashi from fifty paces, not by the visual cues, but because of the jingle that rings out around the shop.

I've taken a number of pictures of the business district around here, because there's some serious work going on. There are more department stores (presumably department stores) going up, and they are gargantuan. The Yodobashi is twelve storeys of shopping floors with a further four or five of storage (at a guess) with five floors below ground, two for shopping, three for parking. This sounds very tame height-wise, by Japanese standards; but the surface area is enormous. Everything here has an american influence, and their street design is no different; so everything is arranged in blocks. The Yodobashi takes up half a block in all directions. It's massive.

So now we arrive at the actual point of this post. Drumroll please... The great camera review!

I've wanted a DSLR for some time now, but haven't really had the need for one. (Need is subjective of course. I don't need a camera like I need, for example, air.) Coming to Japan has shown me that actually, having an exceptional camera would afford great picture taking opportunities; and I've steeled myself for some kind of DSLR purchase.

So Yodobashi camera, despite the name, aren't solely camera based. It is however in their origins, and they have an entire floor dedicated to photography equipment, so there's no better place to go in order to try them out bar perhaps being a camera reviewer of sorts.

Depending on your approach, the first choice is either make or model. If you go with Canon, you are stuck with a few 3rd party lenses and Canon lenses only. If you take the Nikon route you have a larger range of lenses in the Nikon range, and a large number of third party lense manufacturers. Having nosed around the lense section though, it seems Canon, despite having a smaller range, is still well catered for.

This is important for the simple reason that once you've got a couple of lenses for whichever model, switching to a different manufacturer is going to be far more costly. No one wants to replace lenses when they have perfectly good ones sitting on their desk.

This makes the manufacturer choice all the more important.

The Nikon D3000 caught my eye; so I tried that out. From the top down, both Canon and Nikon (the two I narrowed it down to) have an identical menu system from the top of their range through to the bottom. This means if you've picked up one of their other cameras, you're immediately familiar with the one you're holding now. This is extremely good in theory, and works particularly well for Canon. Not for Nikon however, as their menu system is not very intuitive. After finding the setting for 'change me to English,'(日本語) (Japanese I think) navigating is easy enough, but changing settings can prove to be a pain in the backside. And finding them was a little tricky too. That's not to say this system is impossible to use; with a little practice, and some custom menu settings in place I'm sure changing what needs to be changed would be easy enough.  I believe the Canon does have the advantage here though.

I think this is primarily due to the Canons' menu layout. The Canon has a two menu system, where half a dozen different menus are selectable at the top, then depending on which has been chosen, a number of options are displayed. The Nikon seems to just throw everything at you all at once.

Both have customisable menus, which means you can put the settings you change most often right at the top of the menu list, for immediate access. I think overall Canon gets the nod here, but after a little practice they'd both be usable.

The D3000 was pretty light, and easy to use overall. The body was a little small, but that's probably good in the long run. One complaint I have about all the Nikon lenses I tested was the fuzziness of the focus ring. It felt like it'd been oiled one too many times, it slid around with no effort and required a more delicate touch than the Canon equivalents; I don't do delicate.

The D3000 was pretty solid overall; but then I moved from there onto the big daddy. The D3. This is the camera for professionals, and has the professional price tag. It's heavy, and big, and generally feels great to hold. This is where I move on to complain about the Nikon cameras a little more. All the cameras have a large number of focus points to choose from; but being able to choose which the camera should use is a pain in the backside with the Nikon, where it's simply a single button press with the Canon models.

The Nikon has so many buttons and things to press and twiddle that I spent five minutes figuring out how to get it to autofocus on what I wanted; when I managed to set this up however, it was amazing. I don't know how many fps it shoots, but it was too fast to review them all. Obviously I can't talk about image quality, but they seemed sharp when I reviewed them on the screen, and the focus worked perfectly every time. Of course it's indoors and the conditions are perfect, but the cheaper Canon SLR's missed a trick every now and again when continuous shooting; one would turn up a little blurred. Maybe it's just because it's in the shop and has probably been brutalised by the customers.

Overall, I think the D3000 is a little too whimpy. The D3 is probably out of my price range, considering it costs as much as a car...

The big daddy Canon offering wasn't available on the shop floor, but the next best thing, the D7 was available.

In a nutshell. I want this camera. It's brilliant. The menu is a piece of cake to run through, the settings are easy to change on the fly, even for a complete beginner like myself. The focus options are intuitive to use, being mapped to a single button on the body, instead of being buried inside the menus like the Nikons. The zoom and manual focus of the lenses were a treat, while the autofocus was damned near instant. I want this camera! It's a shame about the price though... Another car would sit on the forecourt if I bought this camera.

If a millionaire is reading this, please buy me the D1 mk4 when it comes out. If Jesus is reading this, please buy me the D7 or the D5 mk2. I can't afford either, but one can dream, right?

In light of the entire post being about cameras, and not my travels, it is worth pointing out that Osaka is not very nice. It doesn't have as many big attractions as the other areas (it has a zoo and stuff like that) besides the Osaka castle, which is fantastic, there's not a lot else to do other than shop, eat and drink. (Well, to this untrained eye it seems this is all Osaka has to offer. (Of course there will be more under the surface)

Maybe that's why it's hedonistic?

On a separate note, I'm back to Kyoto tomorrow.  Yay!

Chinese People: Be quiet!

So a couple of days ago I transferred accommodation once again, this time arriving in Osaka.

First impressions are everything in Japan, and my first impressions of Osaka were...

Well let's just leave it at 'not favourable.'  If I were a magic eightball, I would probably say something along the lines of, 'the outlook is bleak.'

I arrived extremely late, because I was having so much fun in Kyoto that I forgot I was supposed to go to Osaka; (a couple more Kyoto posts to arrive on your desktop at a later date) so I didn't have anywhere to stay that night.  This is not uncommon, as I've not booked accommodation since I've been here, travel information or other tourists have provided me with places to stay.  Not to mention the amazing house I stayed in, and hopefully will stay in again before I head back.  (More on that later, as well).

So I met a dutch guy, a Japanese guy, and then an Italian guy on the train from Kyoto to Osaka.  The first two were here on business, the Japanese guy was showing the Dutch guy around, because the Japanese guys' company buys a lot of stuff from Mr.Dutchmans' company.  This surprised me, I didn't think Holland had much of an export industry.  Anyway, they were shocked at my lack of preparation, and I explained that things usually end up alright in the end.

At this point the Italian guy hopped onto the train.  So we were all laughing at my struggling with my bag, (or maybe it was only them laughing?) and a conversation started.  It turns out the Italian guy was on his way back from a sightseeing trip, so I asked him where he was staying.  This is how I ended up where I am now, and is pretty much in keeping with the philosophy of my trip so far.

I've not seen the Italian guy since, but your name is Fabio, and I thank you, sir.  Your English is also excellent.  And yes, Japanese people are afraid of everyone non-Asian, don't worry, it's not just you, you don't smell.

So the first day of actual exploring began extremely late, due to me being very tired and forgetting to set my alarm.  I won't tell you exactly what time I awoke, for you would be ashamed; let's just say it was well into the afternoon.

I went for a soak in the sento, which is kind of like an indoor onsen, which is like a natural hot spring bath thing.  So it's essentially an indoor hotspring bath affair - I promise it's a lot better than it sounds.  A short while later I went and found a restaurant, sampled some more of Japans' delicacies and headed around the area.  I spent an awfully long time walking around, and have a vivid map of the area in my mind.

Unfortunately I walked into the red light district of Osaka straight away, which reminded me tremendously of Amsterdam.  And this pretty much sums up my impressions of Osaka.  It's like a European city.  If you read Chris's (the photographer) website, you'll notice he uses the word 'hedonistic,' a few times when writing about Osaka.  To be honest I think 'hedonistic,' was on his 'word of the day,' calendar when he was writing his website, because it appears a few times.  I would describe Osaka as, 'dirty,' if I were brutally honest, and 'extremely interesting,' if I were feeling particularly kind at the time of writing.

It is dirty.  It is more dirty than Tokyo, and Tokyo has ten times the population living in it.  Having now been to a few areas, there are some clean tourist and working areas, but generally speaking it's not an attractive place to look at.  There is a far higher concentration of homeless than in Tokyo.  Even counting for the fact that my accommodation is probably in the worst area (the price is ridiculously cheap; to the point of it being cheaper to live here than in an apartment) in Osaka, it has a serious homeless problem.  I stayed in the area reknowned for deprivation based problems in Tokyo, and it wasn't as bad as here.

Brothels and homeless aside, everything is extremely cheap, and the people are extremely friendly.  If you haven't spotted where this is going yet, I think Osaka should twin with Hull.  I wouldn't be surprised if they already were.  The people in both cities seem to be extremely simple, straight minded people who want to live their lives in the moment, rather than looking for the big bucks cities like Tokyo or London offer.

I noted in an earlier post that it's the similarities that astound me, more so than the differences.  Although Hull doesn't have the population, or economic importance of Osaka, both are very similar.

I walked into Osaka expecting to see something akin to what I'd seen elsewhere in Japan, and was shocked to see something so completely different.  I walked into Hull expecting the worst, but it did me well; and I'll never forget it.

So we now move onto the real purpose of this entry:  I visited Osaka castle today.  It's just about the only kind of culture in Osaka, as far as I can discern. (Zoo's, while fun, don't count as culture.)  Upon walking around I was attacked by hundreds of small school children, and Chinese people.

The children I don't mind, they run around and shout, are obnoxious and occasionally say hello.  The Chinese on the other hand, were annoying as hell today.  They barge you out of the way, like the elderly Japanese, as if they own the place, (regardless of age) and walk around everywhere shouting.  Even if there are only three people in a room, myself and two Chinese, my eardrums still bleed by the end of the encounter.  Listen up China, you will soon rule the world, we all know this, but you don't have to take Americas' approach to travel; THERE IS NO NEED TO SHOUT EVERYWHERE YOU GO.  Really.  No need.

Apart from this, the trip was generally successful; I enjoyed Japans' second best castle (according to an old boy who sat down and started a conversation in Japanese I only barely understood) and am now looking forward to Himeji, Japans' number one castle.

This is Osaka.  The little brother of Tokyo, and 'hedonistic...'  Apparently.

You can actually see the sky here, which you can't in Tokyo; that's a definite plus on behalf of this medium sized city.

This is on my way to the castle.  Again, lack of planning only slightly hampered my expedition, as I ambled around asking anyone who would listen where the nearest train station was.

This is the first time I've seen a european university advertised in Japan.

It's fitting that Japans grottiest city has ties with Scotland.

Nuff' said.

This is a college of sweets.  Instead of beckhamology, it teaches you how to make cakes and whatnot.  What an absolutely fantastic idea; why don't we have these in England?

Next time I walk into a university, I want to be bombarded with offers of how to make chocolate cakes.

If this doesn't happen I will be seriously disappointed.

The curve of the road accentuates the height of the buildings.

Even though they're not as high as the ones in Tokyo.

And even though they're too high to be considered as picturesque as the ones in Kyoto...

This place feels bigger than the imperial palace, even though it might/might not be.

There are a number of visible towers overlooking the outer walls, and the moat is collosal.  There were people fishing out of it.

You can see the modernity of the city nestled in the background of this picture.

This is a picture for all the horticultralists out there.

I think they're chrysanthemums, based on my limited knowledge of Japanese, I took a guess at the name.


Feel free to correct me.

This is the main castle building poking out from behind some trees, and infront of a large number of clouds.

The clouds didn't post a problem, and the view was fantastic, as you'll see below.

This is taken looking up at the eight storey building.  Of course, despite being shorter back then, the kings of this area knew how to build luxuriously, so each ceiling is tall enough for me to stand tall in; which is a nice feeling.

I still have the crippling need to bend into every doorway, just incase.  I fear this will make me look a fool in England.

Inside it's just basically a giant tourist attraction.  It's been gutted so many times in so any different wars that there's nothing left of the original place, so they just put in a lot of plastic and showy lights.

The view from the top.

It's really a lot better than even this picture shows.

From up here you can't see the dirt, so the city looks like any other metropolitan area.

Notice the giant golden fish?  Because I didn't, until I'd reviewed the photograph.

It's just a nice picture.  That's all I can say for this one.

Looking back at the castle from the ubiquitous koi pond.

It's amazingly peaceful just metres away from all the schoolchild based hubub right at the base of the castle.

It's a really nice place to just sit down and take in the surroundings.  It's  free too, until you enter the castle proper.  A lot of businessmen and women were enjoying lunch at the time of me taking this photo.

Every city in Japan seems to have its' iconic feature, usually a tower.  Tokyo tower, Kyoto tower; and this monstrosity that seems to have grown out of the ground.

This pretty much sums up Osaka.  It's ugly, but it's big and not going anywhere fast, so get used to it.

Well; that's my opinion anyway.

And you can see this thing from everywhere, just like the other towers in the other cities.


That's it for the blog entries today, I'll add my other Kyoto pictures, including the matsuri pictures at a later date.