Tag Archives: #Japan

Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Tokyo Trolley in Traffic

April 22, 1997: I ascended a footbridge over a busy Tokyo thoroughfare to make photos of the rarely captured Tokyo trolley.

Where most of the railway lines in Japan are meter-gauge, the Tokyo Trolley is unusual because it was an early use of 4 ft 8.5 inch gauge train in Japan. The other big users of ‘standard gauge’ in Japan are the Shinkansen routes.

In yesterday’s post, I described the compositional challenges of poles and wires near Bartlett, NH. Compare those images with the sea of poles and wires in this view!

Exposed on Fujichrome Velvia50 using a Nikon N90S with an AF f2.8 80-200mm Nikkor zoom lens.

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photography, Tips and Technique

Shinjuku Station, Tokyo 1997

I made this view in the blue light of dusk on an April evening in April 1997 at Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku Station.

At the time it was the busiest railway junction station in the world, handling more daily passengers that even London’s famous Clapham Junction.

I have used this photograph and others from my 1997 visit in a variety of publications over the last 25 years.

I exposed the photo on Fujichrome with my Nikon N90S mounted on a tripod. I was emulating a style of railway photography popular in the the Japanese magazines at the time which used the extreme blurring of a train through a scene to infer motion.

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photography, Tips and Technique

Shinkansen on Frame 39.

Working with slide film had its perils. Normally, I used 36 exposure roles.

However, I’d carefully load my manual cameras and try to squeeze as many photos out of each rolls as possible.

This was risky, because often the last frame would get ruined in processing. So, I typically save that final frame for something less important, but still interesting.

On April 23, 1997, my father and I waited on a Shinkansen platform at Nishi Akashi west of Osaka. I made a few photos of this passing Series 300 Series highspeed train as it blasted by at approximately 186mph.

Working with my old Nikon F3T, I exposed this final frame on a roll of Fuji Provia 100 as the train passed me at speed. In processing, Fuji cut the last little bit of the slide (to the left of the train). 

For years this slide sat in a box, unworthy of slide shows. I scanned it yesterday. Below are two versions. One is full frame, the other is cropped.

Full-rame JPG scan of frame 39 showing the effect of the cut. Nishi Akashi, Japan.
Cropped scan of the same slide.

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photography, Tips and Technique

Tokyo April 1997

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My preferred camera-lens combination in 1997 was a Nikon N90s with Nikkor 80-200 zoom lens.

This versatile set up gave me great flexibility. At the time I was still exposing both Fujichrome and Kodachrome slide film, but was leaning more and more toward Fujichrome.

Ironically, in retrospect I found that camera flexibility doesn’t necessarily produce the best photos. I think this is because the zoom lens allowed me to quickly adjust the focal length and perspective, I didn’t spend the time to properly scrutinize the scene for the best possible image. This not a fault with the equipment, but in how I was using it.

This photo of JR trains crossing an overpass in Tokyo reminds me when I felt the N90S, 80-200mm lens and Fujichrome Provia gave me limitless photographic potential. Maybe it still does?

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photography, Rail transit marathon

Elegant Paint at Okayama.

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On April 24, 1997, my father and I paid a brief visit to Okayama, Japan, arriving and departing the same day by Shinkansen.

Okayama had a compact two-prong streetcar system with colorfully painted street cars (it seemed that each car was in a different livery).

Traditional colors on this modern boxy car.

Kodachrome in Fuji-land!

I made these photos with my Nikon N90S.

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