_valerian

Today in Ebisu after stopping by hacknet I ran into three members of a Tokyo Leica club called “Leicabit”. Turns out they were just headed out after a lunch with Herbie Yamaguchi.

Since I had just received the GRD only hours earlier I figured this would be a good chance to try it out for the tokyo camera style site.

It was a learning experience as the first shot shows what it looks like when you forget to switch to MY1 (macro).

The other two came out ok:

Annnnnd there was also an “M8″ in the mix:

There was at least one more ricoh digital camera on site too:

Not to mention one of those new plastic TLR Blackbird cameras:

While I didn’t catch the man’s name, he pulled out Camera Magazine Issue 7 from his briefcase/camera bag and showed me the 2 pages he was profiled in. For those of you who are able to pop into a Japanese bookstore anytime soon, check it out.

A friend of mine sold me his GRDII and it arrived this morning. I needed to go into Tokyo for a bit this afternoon, and messed around with it the entire time. The learning curve is not so steep with this camera, particularly if you know how to shoot film.
Having 28mm eyeballs for the past 8 years also helps when knowing where to stand*.

I do like the presets you can program into it- I set up a tokyocamerastyle mode which instantly knocks down the megapixels and brings up the macro setting. The other preset is the 1:1 aspect ratio for square pictures.

The shutter lag is longer than I am used to coming from my other digital camera, but it will probably be ok. It is nowhere close to making me want to give up film, and actually after spending a day going through sub-menus and cold digital options, I realized that Digital Cameras are simply tools. There’s nothing . . . interesting about them. They dryly get the job done but there is nothing else to them. Your digital camera is not going to ever surprise you. A scabby old SLR and a roll of film just might though. That said, there is always going to be a place in my camera bag or pocket for a compact digital camera. Tokyo Camera Style needs it to be at the ready- might be something more to say about this in the next few months. . .

ALSO– Holy Crap don’t go near Akihabara’s Yodobashi Camera on a Sunday afternoon the week that every employed dude in Tokyo gets their Bonus unless you want to replicate the all the joy of being in a space as crowded as the subway, but everyone is trying to get somewhere else** and they’re hot and tired and every 2 meters is an employe shouting sales pitches into a megaphone and some other guys behind the counter are ringing bells.

*Obviously I don’t, as the two antenna coming out of my head in the first shot attest.

**or stopping suddenly in front of you, or shuffling along and looking in another direction, or shouting English or Chinese or Russian loudly, or trying to push their baby stroller somewhere, or just watching their 2 year old toddle around near where the escalator dumps people off on that particular floor etc etc etc