Japan's Brilliant Spring Greens Bug Me.

Bifurcator · Jun 5, 2008

Not really, but makes an interesting thread title. It sure is a brilliant green here in May tho.

1.

2.

C&C always welcome!

- Enjoy!

PS: this is one of the few shots I've posted that was not taken with the Konica/Minolta A2

matt-l · Jun 5, 2008

i said 3

the colors are nice, beautiful subject

but they seem both to have a good bit of noise in them,what was your ISO at? the subjects face is not entirely in focus, which would of been nice. the DOF is perfect for a nice head shot on the first
keep posting photos! also, what kind of beetle is this?

-matt.

Bifurcator · Jun 6, 2008

Yeah, these are crops without scaling so I guess I should have run the Ninja on the noise. Good call! Thanks!

The top one is ISO 100, f4.2, 1/108.7 and the bottom one is same but at 1/95.5 on the shutter. Both at 20mm, no macro, no flash.

Also I have no idea what kind of bug that is. It looks kinda like a Kanabun but different. Here's some varieties of Kanabun I got on Google:

http://www.tabibito.de/japan_blog/blogs/media/kanabun.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1134/1114671459_acaba7a09c_o.jpg
http://mamerider.way-nifty.com/mame/images/2007/08/13/kanabun.jpg

Antarctican · Jun 8, 2008

I also went with '3'. I like the colours and composition.

Bifurcator · Jun 10, 2008

Thanks for taking the time to comment! Much appreciated!

Alpha · Jun 10, 2008

Speaking of spring in Japan, how much to mail me some Fuji Fortia?

Bifurcator · Jun 10, 2008

That's a professional grade film. Shipping it would ruin it - especially in the late spring (now), and summer months. They don't sell it in "Standing in front of a mirror in a dark room"?

Here's the contact numbers I have for Fuji's pro grade distribution:

Customer Information Center TEL 03-3406-2981
Corporate Public Information TEL 03-3406-2490

Alpha · Jun 10, 2008

Fuji doesn't distribute it in the US. The only way to get hold of it is to purchase it in East or Southeast Asia, or have someone there ship it to you. Any ideas?

Bifurcator · Jun 11, 2008

Hmmm, well I'll ship you some if you must. But I would want the $ up front. And I would hope it was a quantity order.

So maybe start a few threads on this and other sites and get a bunch of orders. That way you can make a little bit off it too. Another option is to call a few photo stores and see if they'll order any. There's a Fuji distributor film, chemicals, etc. about 2k from my house and they like to wheel and deal so I could maybe buy me a lunch or two if the order is big enough. I did 24,000 rolls of Fuji 100 or 400 or something to somewhere in NYC about 8 years ago. It wouldn't have to be that big of course but ten or twenty packages of 12 I could see doing. I wonder what arrangements I can find for refrigerated shipping? Hmm, well if it goes further I'll look into that as well.

How ya going to get it developed? Is it just C-41 or something?

Bifurcator · Jun 11, 2008

Also there's a bunch of test shots on photonet here http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009ZxX but by looking I would say that the photographers doing the tests one, don't understand how to focus their cameras and two, don't understand how to expose for this very highly specialized film stock.

It doesn't shoot like regular film you know. It's specifically for plants and flowers. It's so specialized there's even a "spring" grade of the film just for flower colors that occur in spring. I guess everyone was tired of the pink cherry blossoms looking white on standard films so Fuji created this stuff.

Anyway you have to treat the exposures as if the flowers were fluorescent or everything gets over saturated. It looks like these tests were made using the camera's AE. LOL.

Ah, here's some better shots taken with it: http://www2.photosig.com/go/photos/browse;jsessionid=aNeUzBnrJPOgQmcdgM?id=28859

Alpha · Jun 16, 2008

Check out Tommy Oshima's work:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyoshima/

Fortia SP is a slide film based on Velvia, so it's E-6 process. I know all about the cherry blossom thing. Fuji reportedly manufactures only 30,000 rolls every spring.