Gday guys,

I traveled to Japan for two weeks at the start of this month for cherry blossom season. Doing one week total in Tokyo at the start and the end of my trip and one week in Kyoto, with day trips to Himeji and Osaka. The weather for the most part was crap, with lots of rain and wind and generally very little sunshine. All up there was 3 days of good weather, one of those being the day i left ofcourse . Despite the bad weather it was an amazing trip with plenty of food, alcohol, friends and a magnificently beautiful country to explore.

I started my trip using my K50, it was quite challenging to get good photos with all the overcast weather. Quite often under exposing, I got over that and used manual mode quite often (not really what i wanted to have to do on my holiday, I learned alot that way though). When I arrived back in Tokyo it was too late in the afternoon to be bothered traveling out to see the sights so i stupidly went for a look around the west side of Shinjuku where alot of the camera stores are. That resulted in me trading in my K50 and picking up a K3 for about $500AUD which i thought was too gooder price to pass up. So far i have been very happy with the low light performance which is noticeably better against the K50.

I too discovered that I think some sort super wide lens would benefit me greatly, I was thinking either the Sigma 8-16mm, Sigma 10-20mm, Pentax DA 12-24mm or the DA 15mm. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated

I have picked out some of my favourite photos to share with you guys.

Cheers,

Stefan

[sherrvonne]

Photo # 9, is that a giant wall of ceramic pots? Thanks for sharing, beautiful photos.

[silver_dragon]

Photo # 9, is that a giant wall of ceramic pots? Thanks for sharing, beautiful photos.

I believe they were sake barrels, I couldnt find much of a description on any plaques around the general area of where i took the photo. However on the other side of the path behind me where i took was the same arrangement with wine barrels.

Thankyou for the kind comments

[Auzzie-Phoenix]

Congrats on the cheap price for the K3. I personally like #12 and #2 the best. Went to Japan back in '90 to visit former exchange students and spent 3 weeks there... way too hot and humid for me by far, I think I spent the entire trip melting (including when I caught one of their colds and it laid me out for 2 days).

[silver_dragon]

Congrats on the cheap price for the K3. I personally like #12 and #2 the best. Went to Japan back in '90 to visit former exchange students and spent 3 weeks there... way too hot and humid for me by far, I think I spent the entire trip melting (including when I caught one of their colds and it laid me out for 2 days).

One thing ive always wondered when people have told me they traveled to japan in the 90's was how did they manage to travel around with alot less english signs than there is these days. I relied heavily on google maps to help me navigate around japan which made it relatively easy and having all the train station signs in english too, as well as the voice overs on the trains.

Ive heard the summer can be pretty brutal. I went last year in September which was the tail end of summer and found the weather to be the definition of perfect, only really experiencing close enough to Australian summer weather in Nagasaki which was about 35 degrees celcius and really dry.

[Auzzie-Phoenix]

Former exchange students doing translations.... We visited in July... the weather was brutal. Quite different than the 75-90 degree days we get here. I do remember riding on a LOT of trains.

[Rondec]

Great photos. Thank you for sharing.

[cxdoo]

Very nice photos, thx.

[slowpez]

Enjoyed the photos. Thanks for sharing your trip.

[mickey]

What edeiting did you do on the first photo?
Love the colours.

[old4570]

Some very nice photos , great share

[silver_dragon]

What edeiting did you do on the first photo?
Love the colours.

I've been messing around with lightroom lately. I'm a complete noob and pretty much loosely follow a quick and dirty HDR look alike method that i learned from a youtube tutorial. Following that basic formula the picture turned out the way it is.

The day i took that photo, the weather was really overcast with plenty of rain.

Thanks for the positive comments everyone