Friendly Race
200mm, ISO 100, f/2, 1/800

Just like that, another summer month flies by! However, it’s not like I can complain much, as I finally caught up with the plethora of photographs I made in my June travels, and still had some opportunities to make more photographs with what little free time I had.

One opportunity, as you can see above, gave me a nice chance to brush up on my sports photography chops and capture a new sport entirely! Annually, my base’s fitness department hosts a sprint triathlon on base, aptly titled “Beat the Heat Triathlon” since it starts in the morning just before the summer heat gets going. With my trusty NEX-7+200mm f/2 and a borrowed Canon camera (man, Canon’s are weird…), I scurried around the event area, capturing all I could from the athletes of all ages! This event marked the first time I’ve photographed sprinting bicyclists as well, which is another challenge entirely; with a 200mm at f/2, there’s only one frame out of a 10fps burst that will be in focus due to the high subject speed.

You can check out the full set of photos from the swimmers, bicyclists, and runners on the Navy Fitness Yokosuka official Facebook page.

Moving back a couple weeks, though, July began with a nice 4-day break from the trips made to Singapore and India. Because I apparently don’t understand the meaning of taking time off, I decided to go traveling inside Japan on my own again. This time, I took to the northern area of Japan and stayed in Sendai! This is the same general area hit hard by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and radiation disaster. Five years later, and many of the coastal areas affected have been completely rebuilt. I spent most of my time in downtown Sendai and also made a short day trip to a wonderful mountain temple called Yamadera. I will write a short post for that trip soon.

In photography-business news, Sony is reporting to have a quicker recovery from the Kumamoto earthquake than they originally predicted–good news for getting back on track for production and new announcements, I hope! Also, Nikon released a bombshell 105mm f/1.4 FX lens to complete their 58/85/105mm fast prime set. I am sure that lens beats the pants off my 105mm f/1.8 AI-s, but I do have to wonder how favorably it would compare to the Laowa 105mm T3.2 I own…If I had a full-frame Nikon, and a sample lens to test, I would gladly do a write-up, but it is very unlikely I would ever get my hands on either of them any time soon. 🙂

I do not have many photographic opportunities planned for August at the moment, so if anything, there may be just a few spontaneous trips to my local areas. Tokyo is always full of opportunity, so I do see myself going there a couple more times. Otherwise, I want to make a point to at least get started on reviewing that Laowa 105mm T3.2. I don’t need to write a review to tell you it is fantastic, but I know for many of my readers, a bit of objective testing would really help to form a better opinion. That’s all for this update, guys and gals, thanks for dropping by. As always, have a great day!