Visiting Nikon Japan, and other distractions

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Warren

Hi, I'm a blogger with a passion for motorcycle travel. Click icon to read more.

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Three things I can think of that would improve my ride photos.

1. Shoot at dawn and at sunset when landscapes look best. Difficulty to implement – medium, I can wait somewhere until that time but riding at night with wildlife is stupid. Since I am not trying to impress other people, just record my memories it’s hard to justify. Cost – Zero. Possible improvement – 100%.
2. Get a drone and shoot otherwise impossible compositions. Difficulty to implement – High, too many drone restrictions in Japan. Cost – $1000. Possible improvement – 50%.
3. Update my camera. Difficulty to implement – Zero. Cost $200 to Skies the Limit. Possible improvement – 1 or 2%.

It’s not the camera, it the photographer and I lack sufficient skill for camera specs to make a difference – but that’s ok it’s just a hobby. My buying and selling of 2nd hand cameras has never been expensive, mostly they hold their value unlike other things I have lavished funds on like computers or phones, so even if my results vary little I extract a fair amount of enjoyment playing with different cameras.

Nikon Museum

I was passing close so took the opportunity to visit Nikon in Shinagawa.

There is a lot to see here, the above is only a portion of the photography gear on display. Then also you may look at their telescope and microscope sections. Optics are certainly Nikon’s forte.

Due to Covid the ‘hands on’ displays and audio tours were unavailable. Still highly recommended.

Diffraction

Lately with small compacts I’ve been struggling to get landscape photos sharp which is mostly my lack of talent however shooting small apertures with a 20mp M4/3 sensor that’s cropped by it’s lens probably doesn’t help.

I think diffraction has an affect on my small pixel pitch sensor when I shoot at f11. What is diffraction? Good explanation here.

Camera (and bike) reviews contain lots of padding now. Pages of specs you already know, a simple test and a meaningless rating. I’ve been a reader of the highly influential DPReview since it started but lately I feel press release material and personal bias fluff up it’s reviews.

I came upon a site printing what cameras like my Lumix LX100M2 can actually resolve – PCMag. From a modest ceiling at f4 it falls 30% by f11. It’s still a nice camera but perhaps I could do with a change.

Thus I find myself wandering into Bic Camera on my afternoon walks.

Viewfinder games

“Your brain won’t know the difference” said Bob McClane in Total Recall and it was true for that movie but same cannot be said for claims about Panasonic’s field sequential LCD viewfinders. Instead of illuminating all three colour dots in each pixel they rapidly alternate between them thus claiming 2.76m dots, but the clarity is lacking.

Wait a minute, three dots per pixel… yes 2.36 million dots implies high resolution but it’s just 1024 x 768. Yet this low resolution seems to work sometimes. Olympus’s E-M1 EVF with 0.74 magnification is pretty good.

Other end of the EVF scale is Sony’s new A7C which is like viewing a phone screen other side of room through a toilet roll. Canon’s tiny 0.39 magnification EVF I also find impractical.

Moving to the 3.69 million dot 1280 x 960 viewfinders in the Nikon Z5 (0.80 magnification) and Fuji X-T4 (0.77 magnification) I find the Fuji nice but impossible to get the Z5 EVF sharp with dioptric adjuster for my eyesight. I experience same with Nikon Z6/Z7 that have identical EVF.

But at this point I’ve left the realm of compact motorcycle tour cameras behind and am holding things big and heavy that I’d never take anywhere. Why am I even in this section of the shop?

Probably because ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO). It’s a driver in camera gear (and $40K ADV motorcycles). I’m affected like everyone to some degree. There is a tsunami of full frame (FF) sensor hype now that swells with every ‘forum expert’ chiming in.

Some voices of common sense remain. A photographer I followed for years Ming Thein wrote how modern camera’s potential has become much greater than ours and a recent piece on Peta Pixel how 30 professional photographers could not accurately pick if 43″ prints were from an APS-C or FF sensor gives perspective.

Arriving back to Nikon, next to the Z5 was the Z50 which I ignored each visit as it had been sort of dismissed on DPReview.

Combining a revised sensor from the D500, a camera possessing excellent imaging, with Nikon’s latest Z system processor and 16-50 (24mm-75mm) lens that is rated very sharp it seems a great package.

However you require an adaptor to access Nikon’s DX lens catalogue. For me that is a non issue, I have no need for different lenses but for reviewers an adaptor seemed a big deal. Instead I find it comical another camera aimed at amateurs like me and smartphone users has no ability to share images direct to social media or do panoramas or hand held night shots. Manufacturers still stubbornly refuse to modernize their cameras and I presume will complete the slide into irrelevance for most people in a few years.

More important to me is size and viewfinder, the later is 2.36, 0.68 but with surprisingly good optics that can be corrected to my eyesight. I have been pointing every camera at same zoom reach towards a small sign other side of store and I can only decipher the sign with the Fuji X-T4 and Z50 EVF.

Ergonomics are a mixed bag. Its a joy to hold and operate, very light easy to would slip into my walk around bag, however too big for a bike jacket so will need to live in my tour bag. My camera resides there already when I wear a summer jacket or on damp days – which means I won’t always shoot with it compared to a pocket camera.

After trade in on a used model, the Fuji combo is $2500 Aud while the Z50 will be $400 Aud which seems reasonable.