9AM outside the Ginza Apple Store doors - from this angle, all looks almost normal

I had to go to Tokyo station earlier this morning and, because I live nearby, I thought I’d stroll back through Ginza on my way home and see what was happening outside the Apple store at the iPhone 4S launch.

I approached from the back of the line, which started way back – a few blocks from the store:

a tired-looking Apple Store staff-member resting on boxes of water

the line from the front end - looking down towards Ginza 1-chōme

After taking the shot above, I continued walking and literally a few doors down I passed the window of a small book store which really explains quite a bit about the level of Apple obsession in Japan:

magazines in the window a few doors down from the Apple Store in Ginza

Just before 9AM, the line stretched a few blocks, basically from Ginza 1-chōme station to the Apple store. The time says 9:20 because I mapped it out after I’d left the area, and I basically decided to map it out because I’m endlessly intrigued by the fact that people will actually line up overnight for consumer goods in 2011.

approximate length of the line as I strolled by

Obviously, as you can see from the map image, I’m an iPhone user, but NOTHING would motivate me to line up for an electronic device. In fact, it reminds me of the pictures from Russia that fascinated me as a kid: people lining up for scarce goods at GUM, except, as noted, people in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras were lining up for things that were scarce. Today, in wealthy so-called developed nations, we have people lining up for items that are essentially commoditized. It’s truly bizarre.

]]> http://blog.tokyololas.com/apple-iphone-4s-launch-tokyo-ginza/feed/ 1 http://blog.tokyololas.com/iphone-8mm-app-an-unusually-warm-february-day/ http://blog.tokyololas.com/iphone-8mm-app-an-unusually-warm-february-day/#comments Sat, 26 Feb 2011 05:44:43 +0000 Laura http://blog.tokyololas.com/?p=1138 Haru ichiban (春一番), first winds of spring, was an unusually warm one in Tokyo this year.

I was in Yurakucho around noon yesterday and shot a few clips with the iPhone app 8mm Vintage Camera as I passed by the station . You can see that there are quite a few people without coats enjoying the warmth and it really did feel like summer is right around the corner:

This does not bode well for anyone receiving a Christmas card on time (particularly those of you who are relying on Canada Post), but we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, busy means no time with my camera and no time spent wandering the streets of Tokyo, so I have been filling the void by using my iPhone camera a lot more than usual. I also finally started uploading to Instagram. I am not sure how much I’ll post there – I’ll aim for a shot a day like I do with my Hipstamatic blog on Tumblr, but, to be honest, I don’t love the exclusively iPhone interface for interacting with people. Of course, you can look at individual photos in a browser, like this, but you can’t do anything else in a browser aside from edit your account.

Now, obviously, the answer to this quasi-complaint will be something along the lines of: “Of course you can’t do anything else in a browser because the whole point is to do it through the app – it’s fast, it’s immediate, it’s fun, etc.” And, yes, I get that, but, for me, I just find it hard to browse significant numbers of photos and, therefore, find people I might want to “follow” through the app interface. I prefer the flexibility of Tumblr: if I want to do some serious browsing, I can jump to my desktop or laptop, but if I just want to do a quick post, I can do that directly from my phone.

That being said, I like some of the filters (like the cross-process one. XP-II) and I like the immediateness of it. Here’s a shot I took the other day in Kofu – I arrived late at night and there was nobody around and, as I was walking to the hotel, I passed this little alley:

I was only in Kofu for about 20 hours and most of that time was spent indoors, so I didn’t see much, but I was so glad to have caught the scene above and will bring my camera the next time I find myself going there.

And, by the way, if you want to add me on Instagram, my user name is lauramac

It was a really funny moment: we were waiting for the lights to change at the Ginza 4-chome intersection (the main intersection in the middle of Ginza) and we could hear the sound of a group of motorcycles approaching (really loud, as in bosozoku style) and this guy on a bicycle rolls up to the intersection and sort of positions himself in front of the pack.

I just happened to have my iPhone video rolling because I thought the idea of the motorcycles roaring past all the boutiques and the big koban at the intersection was funny; but, when the guy on the bike took off first, it was priceless (and then you can see him circle back around at the 18 second mark, after his manoeuvre):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmiY1lfS3Ww

Shot with a Canon 50D and the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 at ISO 100 f/2.5

This is a 3 exposure shot tonemapped with Photomatix. The colour was not augmented in any way (i.e., no blue tones added or bumped in post-processing).

I originally thought it would be good to do this as an iPhone HDR comparison shot, but it’s just not a fair comparison. I’ll post the iPhone shot anyway, but the fact is, as useful as it sometimes is to get the extra light in shots with my iPhone, there are very few shots where it seems to have made any discernible difference.

I would probably attribute the lack of difference to the fact that, because I know how to shoot manually with an SLR and I think about light, composition, etc., when I take an iPhone shot, I’m already maxing out the light potential in the scene and positioning the camera for the best results.

The result with the iPhone is not a “bad” photo, but it will not have me abandoning my quick 3-exposure tonemapped technique any time soon. It came out very noisy, so here it is as-is (cropped to get almost the same view as the 30mm on my 50D):

iPhone HDR no post-processing

And here it is after applying Imagenomic’s Noiseware:

iPhone HDR + Imagenomic's Noiseware

More than anything, when I look at the above two photos, this seems a good sales pitch for Imagenomic’s Noiseware (which is, by the way, an excellent product)!