To the South of Shikoku is the town of Kochi. It is a famous fishing town and boats some amazing restaurants for fish. I am not a usually a huge fish fan, but this place was heaven for me. It has a fabulous castle right in the middle of the city and I dragged my Mamiya 645 there at both sunset and sunrise to photograph it. I saw some surprising things, but really enjoyed myself with it (by Japan standards) pretty much to myself. I have a love-hate relationship with medium format. I love the results, but sometimes I wish I did not have some of the effort involved - heavy equipment, hard to load (especially my Pentax 67II, which is a super pain to load), hand metering, lack of diopter adjustment and tough scanning choices. Once I get the results though, I am smitten and am willing to forget all that….
Sunrise at Kochi Castle. Mamiya 645 Pro TL with Fuji Provia 400X film. Sadly this film seems to be heading for a end of life soon. I have bought dozens of boxes of the stuff in 120 format in case.
This fabulous exercise group was underway at 7am. All the blaring speakers with what sounded like 1970’s exercise radio. Some of the participants seemed to be more enthusiastic than others. They invited me to participate - which for some reason I declined. Also Fujifilm Provia 400X.
the light was wonderful. This pine tree was supposed to be more than 100 years old. This time with Kodak Ektar 100. A film I struggle with during the scanning process. Amazingly fine grain. Sometimes it can look too “digital” for my tastes.
More Ektar in the morning.
And some black & White in the evening courtesy of Kodak TMAX 400. This time with a Nikon F100 and Nikkor 50mm F1.4D AF lens.
And again. Black and White really suits the subject. TMAX is an interesting film. I prefer Fujifilm ACROS, but at 100ISO is can be a little slow. Again shot with the F100. A nice camera indeed.
Back to Ektar in the morning.
And again. This place would be very special in spring given the number of Cherry (sakura) trees everywhere. In winter it is a little less colourful.
I do love the pine trees. They create a really nice level of detail that is brought out by the qualities of medium format film.