Flight
105mm, ISO 100, T3.2, 1/125
As many of my online followers and subscribers have probably noticed, I was conspicuously absent for most of the month of September. To make a long story shorter, I have been dealing with some health issues that prevent me from getting the energy needed to go out and make photos. What a shame, too, given that September was the last full month of warm weather here in Japan. As the calendar changes to October, I can already feel the cool Fall breeze setting in. With any luck, though, I’ll beat my current condition and get back to my shutter-happy self sooner rather than later. After all, with Fall comes lovely color changes in the trees, and the temples here in Japan are absolutely surrounded by flora!
I did have one little bit of photographic work, though, in the form of a final triathlon to cover for Navy Fitness Yokosuka. Unlike the previous sprint triathlons, this one was a full Olympic-distance race, taking well over three hours for most participants to complete—in the rain! The upside? I got a lot of chances for great photos, both in and out of the water. The downside? I pretty much filled my card up with the 10fps bursts I love from my NEX-7 (and my poor 400mm got a bit waterlogged…)! Needless to say, but it was a long editing day sorting through those thousand photos… 🙂 As always, you can check out the full album on their Facebook page by clicking here!
Grit
400mm, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/500
Otherwise, in the photography world, Photokina happened earlier this month, and as one of the bigger trade shows of the year, companies brought out their best products to shine. Sony in particular surprised many with the announcement of their flagship A99 Mk II, which is by all accounts one of the most technologically advanced consumer DSLRs ever for both stills and video work. If I had any investment in A-mount glass, or felt the need to go back to a bigger camera body (I don’t), I would be hopping on the pre-order train for that camera quicker than you could say “Buy it Now”. Oh, and Fuji perhaps stole the show with their own mirrorless medium-format camera to compete against Hasselblad, the GFX. Though, as I expected, it is still prohibitively expensive at $9k just for the body alone.
That’s all for this quick little update guys and gals, thanks for dropping by! I really want to be able to get out and make more photographs of Japan, so I can only hope to recover quickly enough to explore more this month. As always, have a great day!
Matthew Durr Photography 