On a trip last year around the coast of France and along the Spanish foothills of the Pyrenees, I wanted to take along some film that had a slightly different character to my usual, old school FP4. Being a convert to Ilford from Kodak it sort of made sense to give Delta 100 a go. …
5 Frames of the Granite Coast on Delta 100 in Rodinal Read More
I checked in to a decent hotel on the south side of the city and went out for a recce, walking north through the love hotel district, then “Soapland” – which I’ll leave to your sordid imaginations – and on to “Suskino”, the drinking and restaurant area. Nothing out of the ordinary on the way, …
Drinking Districts in Japan VI: Sapporo, and a Gruesome Start Read More
Yurakucho is an area and station name, close to Tokyo station, between the expensive Ginza shopping area, the Imperial Palace, and the Marunouchi office, financial and shopping district. The area contrasts starkly with previous areas I have written about – it’s not a specific set of streets but restaurants and bars are scattered over the area and many are in the arches under the main train line. The focus is rather more food than drink and the clients generally don’t go to get drunk – though a proportion do end up that way – and are mostly out for a relatively inexpensive meal and drinks with friends and colleagues.
Leica rather missed the boat when digital came along so of course I’m talking about the best film Leica. And no, its not another “the M3 is the best camera ever made” review. But to begin, a bit of background.
My first ‘camera’ was a 4×5 I made with my father’s help, and a loaned lens from my uncle who worked at Taylor Hobson in Leicester, UK. The wooden box camera used glass plate negatives – remember those? Focusing was hit and miss, manually sliding the fat projector lens in and out until infinity seemed as good as it could get – then stopping down with a cardboard cut-out sleeve over the lens. I was a teenager and was making the camera for a single purpose – to photograph a comet which was easily visible stretching across the sky.
On the east side of Shinjuku station is an area of half a dozen narrow streets, the “Golden Gai” in the Kabukicho district, formerly the post-war black market area and later prostitution district, now just small run-down drinking bars. On the west side is “Omoide Yokocho” (memory lane), essentially a single alley barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, known colloquially as “piss alley”.
