Kyoto - Film and Digital | Runacres @ Large

Kyoto is sort of a photographers paradise. It is chock full of temples and shrines (over 2,000) and fabulously easy to get around. Saved from damage during the bombing of WWII - although more damage has been done by developers since then - it still has many of the older districts and fabulous architecture that must have been commonplace in Japan pre-1940. I have been 5 times now to Kyoto, and still am fascinated by the place. I trekked this time with the express purpose of photographing the famous colours of autumn. The prior year we had gone a couple of weeks early and missed them. We were determined to get it right this time. Actually we ended up maybe 1 week late and just caught the end of the process. Still, it was magical and very much worth it - in spite of very cold and wet weather for much of the time.

I took along a Hasselblad 500CM and standard Carl Zeiss lens, along with 3 film backs and a lot of positive and negative film. I also took along my new Sigma DP1 and DP2 digital cameras to see just how good the photos would be. The Hasselblad was not used anywhere nears as much as a wanted as it rained a lot and the thing simply became a burden. The Sigma's were much more manageable in the weather and could be used with gloves. A lesson learned about portability. The photos I did get from the Hasselblad were lovely, but using faster than anticipated film (due to poor light) meant I did not get the kind of colours from the film that I was anticipating. The digital pictures are presented here with almost no editing at all.

So - we need to make more trips to Kyoto for me to get the kind of results I would like to get from my larger format cameras. I cannot think of a better thing to do….