Features » Of Rice and Zen - The Kyoto Photoblog

iPad publishing revolution: The web page-app-ebook-web app convergence

May 032010

Should we expect to see a convergence of the holy trinity of web app, web page and ebook in the near future?

When Apple unleashed the first videos demonstrating the iPad one throwaway remark sent shockwaves through the literary community. It was a reference to the possibility of adding video and sound to ebooks. The reaction was startling. People all over the internet began to gush about this new possibility, as if text had never been married with video and sound before. Obviously that technology is not really what’s new; it is people’s way of thinking about books that really changed.

There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about using video and sound to enhance your project. In fact there’ll be millions of people with deeply entrenched ideas about what constitutes a book who will resist anything but pure text. When presented with unfamiliar things there is a natural bent toward conservatism in most humans. It is the safer of the first responses. “There will be opportunities to be progressive later, when we’ve considered the ramifications of this”, your instinct tells you. “But for now, let’s just resist change and try to buy some time.”

So the paper-purists will tell you video and sound are too nakedly descriptive. They’ll swear that the magic of books is that the images are conjured in the readers’ head and not prescribed by the artist. They’ll claim that these additions defeat the purpose of the beautiful text, crackling with potential energy. Pregnant with meaning waiting for the reader to incubate it in his own imagination and deliver it into the world intermingled with his own blood, sweat and tears. Only by doing so can he bring something to the text and achieve the required measure of investment in it to make it a conscience-altering experience.

There may be some truth to this. But when people strenuously resist paradigm shifts and redefinitions of what they had supposed was a simple and immutable concept – tree, apple, book – what they are really expressing is angst. The self is an existentialist project that is pinned upon some truths that the subject holds to be self-evident. In the 21st century those self-evident truths are harder to come by. Fewer things can be pinned down and fewer cornerstones are lying around to build on. God died with modernism. Even capitalism just proved itself not to be as immutable and infallible as dollar-chasers had assumed. If “book” were to start shifting too, well we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. We’re like pond skaters and Apple are the child hovering over us with a bottle of washing up liquid waiting to squirt in a drop to break down the surface tension and watch us all drown. The ground turns to liquid and everyone flounders in a vast ocean of existential angst.

There is no reason to believe that the judicious combination of video, sound and text in the age of the ebook cannot become as deeply refined and as rarely appreciated a skill as was the judicious arrangement of words in the age of the paper book.

We used to have meta-narratives (narratives that unify and tie-up all the other narratives that define our lives – “the one true God” being a prime example) around which one could build a life. Nowadays we’re slowly getting smart enough to abandon them, but we’ve taken to flagging some other beliefs and concepts as cast-iron so that we can stop thinking about them.

Tree. Apple. Book

As soon as a concept is properly labeled it can be shelved and forgotten. This leaves brain RAM free for considering the bigger questions like the subjective nature of “truth” and the uncertainty of “good”. Unfortunately, as the pace of technological development picks up trees are proving to be a massive source of anxiety for us all, we have no idea what’s in our apples anymore and a book is no longer a book.

Apple’s app store did an interesting thing for bloggers. It allowed us to wrap a blog (be it a database of information, reviews, tutorials or stories) in a little wrapper and call it an app. Why is this important? Because nobody is going to pay for a blog. They’re so untrustworthy, messy, unprofessional and ubiquitous. But people will buy an app because they’re tidy, contained and they have a shiny wrapper. Humans will always judge books by their covers. It is an intrinsic part of our nature to judge things visually. It is time we made peace with this fact.

Some people, who are invested in open standards and innovation are not big fans of the appifying of web content. Many would like to see a return to the days of wild innovation that led up to IE6. The insistence on web standards, it is said, holds back innovation. Web developers are best left to unbridled experimentation and the standardisation of what follows should be the burden of WC3. When seen from that perspective the appifying of the web is seen as something of a loss. Safari on the iPhone 3G is a sluggish and punishing experience. Apps, on the other hand, deliver the same content with a quick and responsive interface.

Using one of the dozens of services like Blurb a blog can be turned into an ebook. Similar services and software and software can help you turn the same blog into an app. The content of the blog/app/ebook trinity can be exactly the same now. The only thing that changes is the packaging, the interface and the public’s willingness to pay for the content. This essentially means that while the majority lament the loss the tactile quality of the paperback and the smell of libraries, others will be celebrating the exciting change that is democratizing culture and reading.

While the stragglers wail and gnash their teeth, that tech-savvy minority will be at the forefront of a digital revolution in which the categories of blog, photojournalist’s multimedia slideshow, ebook and iPad app essentially bleed into each other. There is no reason for a blog, an app and an ebook to signify different things anymore. Sure there will be people who insist of listening to vinyl, shooting on film and reading from paper. But it is important to recognise the difference between lamenting the loss of something that was better and lamenting the loss of categories that seemed not to be in flux because they were easier to deal with when they weren’t moving.

A little more exertion is required to recognise that the world is in a constant state of flux. To constantly have to reevaluate the meaning of safe words like “book” is a subconsciously exhausting prospect to many. They’d rather a few of the stars would just stop moving. A lot of mental plate-spinning is required when signifiers and their signifieds become broken links. But an inability to embrace uncertainty and change marks you as extinct to the world of thought and social commentary.

On the other hand there are those of us who would much rather embrace the changing concept of book. The latter group no doubt won’t worry too much about the gradual erosion of the snobbery that says reading books is somehow “better” than reading magazines and web pages because it requires a longer attention span. When I’m ready to consign myself to irrelevancy I’ll bemoan the death of the good old LCD monitor or weep for the death of the under-appreciated Blu-ray. But until that day I think the future is bright for us multimediographers and I look forward to embracing the fluidity of everything that once seem to be set in stone.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Japan's economic makeup changing?

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Apr 282010

We’re going through a time of amazing change. Physical media for movies and music already seems quaint and backward whereas not so long ago DVD was too futuristic for some. Cash swapping hands seems awfully analogue when I could just have you swipe your card into my iPhone instead. Operating in the meatworld is for dinsoaurs; the non-physical worlds are so much more elegant.

In one of my guises as a multimediographer I’m interested in distribution, technology and employment shifts in the world of digital imagery. The chances of being an employed photographer of a publication, or even a freelancer recieving assignments, are incredibly slim. The stock business has broadened out to a huge base of people submitting photos and none of them scraping up enough money to live on. The democratisation of a once elitist career path. Demand for digital imagery has never been higher, but careers in photography are down for the dirt nap.

Similarly the press tells us business is picking up, employment is up, demand for industrial robotics is on the increase. Despite that this month alone six on one floor of a department store in a neighbouring prefecture have closed down. It appears that Japan’s economy is in a state of flux, rather than simply decline or recovery.

Could it be that traditional wisdom about where and how people want to use their cash are no longer viable?

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Start Me Up

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Apr 232010

The Japanese Sarariman construction kit

In Japan being a pseudo-human simulacrum constructed out of a plastic mold like a toy off a factory production line is not, as you may expect, a satirical statement about the pale imitation of life that is the late capitalist corporate drone. It is, on the contrary, a marketing tool. This ad represents a desire. A pre-fab identity kit devoutly to be wished.

A myriad of tiny psychic reinforcements like this all around Japanese youngsters reinforce the homogeneity that is so unsettling to those from a society whose cultural signifiers promote free-thinking and individuality, even if the lifestyle is similar.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Japanstock: Miidera's Holy Spring

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Apr 172010

The name comes from the springs at the temple which were used for the ritual bathing of newborns, and in honor of Emperors Emperor Tenji and Emperor Temmu, and Empress Jitō, who contributed to the founding of the temple. Today, the Kondo, or Main Hall, houses a spring of sacred water.

- Wiki

Popularity: 9% [?]

Buy a tablet or buy into Apple's iPad?

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Apr 172010

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After years of banging the same drum I still find myself speaking about the iPhone and iPad phenomena as if they were objects, to be judged on their merits as hunks of metal and glass. The speed, heft, resolution and tactile qualities are, of course, vital ingredients in the user experience, but when you weigh up the competition and find the screens and memory modules are largely manufactured by the same few companies you should start to reach the conclusion that judging the iPad by it’s hardware is akin to judging a meal by the chopsticks. They are vital to the experience, of course, but without a kitchen full of cooks your shiny chopsticks would only really be useful for putting your hair up in a pretty bun.

I thought of a more appropriate analogy by which to explain this point if view.

Back in the day a certain kind of company would try to think of a stylish (or in Japan, “cute”) and innovative way to display your toilet roll in the hopes that you’d be won over by the design, buy the product and never hear of the company again.

Nowadays mobile phone companies, internet service providers and satellite TV companies have shown us that taking a one-off payment makes no sense when they could feasibly keep squeezing you for micro- payments at regular intervals.

That’s why the smart company nowadays sells a system for the customer to buy into or subscribe to. If you want to use our products you have to use our proprietary mics and controllers (Sony), our vacuum cleaner bags (Hoover) or our coffee sachets (Kenco).

In the case of this toilet roll the makers thought of the problems faced by large institutions trying to provide facilities to hundreds of people. Namely, the need for a janitor stalking the halls to check there was toilet paper in each cubicle. That or they needed to able to trust their guests not to steal the precious rolls.

The system in the photos above saves the buyer thousands of dollars a year in man-hours by locking the toilet roll up behind bars. When the roll is gone, the bar can be lifted and the next roll released from its cage. This is accomplished by the master step of the system: you don’t use normal toilet rolls with a cardboard tube in the centre. You manufacture your own, tube-less roll.

The client has to buy your roll giving you a residual income. The buyer doesn’t need to pay for as many man hours as the roll-refreshing burden has been spread between yourself, the manufacturer, and the customer. The customer doesn’t begrudge the manufacturer the cost of the proprietary rolls because he would’ve had to buy from someone anyway.

By doing away with “the keeper of the sheets” you have locked the buyer into your system. If the buyer wants to use an open system he is welcome to dispense with the system, buy a standard holder, search around for a trustworthy toilet roll manufacturer and hire someone to change or guard the rolls for him. But having tried the holistic approach, what kind of company would go back to doing things piecemeal?

And that’s why you should be thinking about owning an iPhone or an iPad. Not for the touch screen tablet, which will shortly become a dime a dozen, but for the system you’re buying into; you need a well- though out app store with standardized design and interface principles. You need some kind of basic framework in which developers can work to make any use of your touch screen. Without that, who’s going to keep your sheets? Perhaps you’d like to QA every stall while managing your company?

And that’s why you should be thinking about your tablet purchase not as an object, but as an ecosystem. Buy “a tablet” or buy into Apple’s app store?

Popularity: 10% [?]

BOYS & GIRLS, KEEP TO THE RULES

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Apr 132010

I’ve been in Japan four years now and this poster still encapsulates one of the most striking cultural features of this area of the world. When I was fresh off the boat I instinctively assumed this was a satirical and biting album cover by an incisive alternative band, the Japanese equivalent of Radiohead, lampooning the robotic automaton that Japanese society aims to churn out.

It turns out though that this was made completely without irony and is a plea to the kids to be glassy-eyed plebeian drones in a sea of middle-class, middle-income, middle-of-the-road, middle-aged, mid-sized prefab housing, voting the middle way in a mid-sized city, lapping at a beachhead of mediocrity and to keep pumping out water-headed miracle babies so that the whole, suicide-inducing process can continue on into infinity. Soul-less clones stamped out on a factory production line to act as canon fodder to the economy. A most distasteful symbol of character fascism in late capitalist 21st century life and a sad case of tail wagging dog. I could only hope the designers responsible shed a tear as they brillo-padded themselves clean in the shower after turning in this poster.

Having said that, I now got into the habit of staring indignantly at anyone who dares talk above a whisper in a public place.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Aho vs Baka

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Apr 052010

Schism
Differences between Kansai and Kanto are slight but numerous enough that in Japan’s collective unconscious the country is thought to be split along a linguistic and dietary fault-line whose epicentre is Nagoya. Most people have heard a few tidbits about the perceived differences between east and west Japan; Kanto tatami mats are smaller and it’s people more sophisitcated, whereas Kansai-jin tend to be kinder towards foreigners, funny, entrepreneurial and food-lovers. While it’s not easy to separate the myth from the facts, some of the differences aren’t just perceptual. The electricity supply in the east and west of Japan varies due to competition between Tokyo Electric Lamp Company and Osaka Electric Light Company during the burgeoning years of the power supply industry. I set out to find out what Kansai residents thought was dividing Japan. It turns out the answer boils down to the letter “S”.

Stupidity
One common story goes that once upon a time an academic investigation found that the word aho (“stupid”) has a playful nuance in Kansai and that baka (“stupid”) is considered quite harsh. Supposedly the reverse is true in Kanto. Some say that aho is acceptable in Kansai because a large number of TV comics hail from Osaka and that if you’re not a Kansai comedian you’d be better throwing around baka with reckless abandon instead.

This has all the qualities of a truism in the sense that it’s not entirely true. In reality a lot of the impact comes down to context and manner of speaking, but it’s a nice story and those are usually the ones that catch on. Less famously, in the linguistic no-man’s-land of Nagoya the word tawake is the insult of choice. It derives from the Japanese for “to divide a rice field”, and comes from an age in which a person who shared that most valuable of possessions would have been considered truly stupid.

Salt
Nagoya is the front line of the war for control of your tastebuds too. Across Japan udon is served with a sauce called dashi that falls into two types. Usukuchi (“weak tasting”) is the lighter coloured dashi favoured in Kansai. It has a slightly fishier flavour than it’s Kanto iteration due the katsuo (“bonito”) with which it’s made. Kanto on the other hand has a penchant for koikuchi (“strong tasting”) which is darker and made with a larger serving of soy sauce.

This tendency has filtered down from traditional dishes to more recent abomina… I mean creations such as dehydrated noodles. The ubiquitous “Cup Noodle” and its grotesque hoard of malformed offspring are said to be saltier on the far side of Nagoya, although the packaging is the same.

Soy sauce
Shoyuu was originally made entirely with soybeans but now it’s made from a half soybean and half wheat mix, which makes it salty and sharp but cheaper to produce in massive quantities. The 100% soybean version is now called “tamari”, is smoother and richer in taste and is often served with sashimi in more upmarket restaurants. In general it is believed Kyo-ryori (“Kyoto style cuisine”) restaurants are more likely to offer usukuchi shouyu to avoid overpowering and coloring their dishes.

Swine
The English word “meat” is a dangerously vague and is never to be trusted when found on jars or menus. When Marx said “question everything” I have no doubt that he meant we should ask from exactly which part of which animal does “meat” come? In Kansai however, niku (“meat”) is used almost interchangeably with “beef”. However, those cunning Kanto-jin can’t be trusted not the meddle with the sanctity of our beloved yakiniku or kare-raisu (the Japanese bastardisation of “curry and rice”) either. Both are understood to be beef dishes in Kansai, but readers should beware that they will most likely be duped with pork when they order these staples east of the border.

Most surmise this porky preference must have been due to lack of land for cattle in the more developed North-eastern areas. This is perhaps supported by the notion that it seems to be only Kanto where pork is the standard implication of the term oniku. In Kansai it’s not uncommon for people to ridicule the supposedly urbane and street-smart Kanto-jin for their preference for pork because, to non-Kanto-jin eyes at least, pork is cheaper and less desirable than beef.

Satsumaage
The ubiquitous oden (those unnatural brownish shapes languishing in the dark water next to the counter in your local conbini) includes satsumaage (“deep fried fish paste”), which is round and dark in Kansai. In Kanto it is still made with fish paste but once battered is rectangular, white and melts in the mouth. Who knew fish paste could be so varied?

Another key ingredient of oden as far as Kansai denizens are concerned is chikuwa (meaning “bamboo ring”) which is a tube-like food product made from ground fish, salt, sugar, monosodium glutamate and egg white. Given that wretch-inducing list of ingredients (few great dishes can be described as “tube-like”) you wouldn’t think changing the recipe would be such a bad thing, but those ker-azy Kanto-jin have counterfeited their own Frankenstein-esque mockery of the original called chikuwabu. Although you may have believed oden to be a largely ichthyological adventure for the tastebuds, chikuwabu is blasphemously NOT made from fish but from wheat, water and salt, after which it is made to look like its Kansai counterpart. This is, predictably enough, put down to a one-time lack of the necessary raw materials and human ingenuity did the rest. Ingenuinity FTW.

Samurai Standing on Stairs
It is often said that on Kanto escalators people stand to the left and walkers pass on the right and that in the Kansai region the opposite is true. In reality I’ve found that most people alternate to create a new extreme sport I like to call “the late for work slalom” or alternatively they stand right in the middle in a pose called “baachan obliviousness”.

According to the Japan foundation of Sydney, “One theory to explain this is that in Tokyo, the samurai preferred to stay on the left, where they could draw their swords more easily, while in Osaka the merchants preferred to be on the right, to protect their belongings carried in their right hand”*. This sounds convincing for the millisecond before you remember that when the samurai were drawing swords, escalators were pretty thin on the ground. Ah, but they DID have stairs! I hear you cry. True, but standing motionless on the right side of a staircase was unlikely to have made you popular with your tono-sama either.

• http://www.jpf.org.au/06_newsletter/hitokuchi_3new.pdf

Popularity: 22% [?]

A beautiful spring day for a GF1, BLT and an OL

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Apr 052010

I wonder if my family have any idea what I’m talking about sometimes…

Some background on the title: OL is a Japanese abbreviation of “office lady” which refers to woman hired as window dressing to make tea for men and appeal to new clients. She is typically expected to get married before she hits 30 so she can be replaced with a younger model. Last months the women’s edition of the business newspaper Nikkei published a piece for their emerging market of confident, ambitious businesswomen informing them exactly how they were expected to make the tea for their male counterparts. One wonders how their demographic took the advice.

The OL is, linguistically and socially, a symptom of the abundant discrimination that exists in 21st century Japan. Case in point: This year Japan voted for it’s most influential people in Nikkei’s “Change Makers of the Year” competition. In the 54 names not a single female appeared. 8 architects are among the finalists but Kazuyo Sejima, who was a co-winner of the Pritzker prize this year, did not make the list. Japan is looking increasingly like a technologically and socially terrified dinosaur whose old guard needs to be replaced if the country is to have a hope of keeping up with the times.

Last month person to person money transfers via Paypal were blocked in Japan, perhaps a further indication of the establishment’s continues tendency towards technological isolationism. Just after the iPad was released Japanese publishers proudly claimed it wouldn’t work out in Japan and that the publishing industry wouldn’t be won over by epub. As if ebooks would go away if Japan continued to claim to be more too complex and inscrutable for a foreign company to do business here.

Today Nikkei took their retrogressive and reactionary knee-jerking a step further by threatening to sue anyone who links to their top page or top category pages. One can scarcely imagine a more backwards and fearful reaction to the immense possibilities of the internet and the changing face of business. If Japan cannot learn to resist the time-honored pose of enigmatic superiority the pretentious old boys club may just find the global thinkers squeeze them out of their own boardrooms before too much longer. In Starbucks, on the other hand, an OL is a far less distasteful “Honey Orange Latte”. It leaves a better taste in the mouth. And is creamy too. Omnomnom.

Ps: it was made for me by a dude, I think Japan’s gonna be okay.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Photowalk: mini shrine next to Gion's Kinoshita

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Mar 292010

If you come to Kyoto and take a subway to Gion Shijo station on the Keihan line you’ll emerge opposite Minamiza Theatre and next to the bridge overlooking the picturesque expanse that is the Kamogawa River.

If you cross the road and head down Shijo Dori towards Yasaka Jinja you’ll come across some interesting side streets on your way. Down one of the largest you’ll find a large food store on the corner called きのした (kinoshita).

Kinoshita is immediately recognisable because it features a rather famous, if inexplicable, statue outside of a boy being chased by a dog with his shorts being pulled down by the gnashing hound’s jaws.

On the right of the corner, almost hidden from view is a tiny cubby hole smaller than a phone booth in which is secreted a beguiling shrine crammed full of stickers, ema (prayer boards) and dishes of purifying salt.

It is believed that the higher one places one’s sticker in a shrine the more likely it is to be noticed by the gods. On the other hand pride and and greed wouldn’t be looked upon favourably, so sticker placement strategy is a tricky business.

The wooden plaque next to the shelf informs visitors that herein resides the 絵結びの神 (emusubi no kami – the God of matchmaking). Generations of Gion residents have made their prayers and left their stickers here over the years to persuade lady luck to look kindly on their burgeoning relationships.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 vs Nikon D40X Digital SLR: The GF1 in the Of Rice and Zen Workflow

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Mar 122010

The Pancake

Oh my god. What a lens. This lens tends to be the default choice for buyers for two reasons.

1. Buying a long, telescopic lens would defeat the object of the portability of the GF1. Off the shelf the pancake and GF1 set is an incredible package.

2. It’s a really good lens.

So Panasonic’s 20mm prime lens is known as the pancake lens. A prime lens is a lens that doesn’t zoom. The advantage is that they tend to be sharper than zoom lenses. Plus they get you hardcore points with “real” photographers who believe the more difficult the process the more professional you are. The lens alone if worth $400 and is worth every cent, which makes the total price of the package very attractive indeed.

The Lumix DMC-GF1 is a Micro Four Thirds Camera from Panasonic that has proved very popular with consumers and photographers alike. The GF1, along with the Olympus Pen E-P1, has spearheaded an invasion the photography world that non-tech geeks seem not yet to be fully conscious of. It revolves around the arrival of the Micro Four Thirds format.

As we pointed out in our iPad articles its often illuminating to judge the success or failure of an undertaking on its own terms. So let’s take a look at Panasonic’s marketing material to get an idea of where they’re pitching the GF1 and what claims they’re making for its greatness.

12.1 Megapixel Digital Camera

•Pro-level picture quality in an ultra compact design

•High Definition AVCHD Lite Movie Recording

•Intelligent Auto Mode with “Peripheral Defocus”

•Kit includes 20mm, f1.7 micro four thirds “pancake” lens

Obviously we’re going to want to take subjective claims like “pro-level picture quality” with a pinch of wasabi. Most professional photographers wouldn’t even class the prosumer Nikon D40X, with which we’re comparing the GF1, as a “pro-level” camera. It’ll be for you to decide how closely the photos fit your idea of “pro” shots.

What interests me though is how close the GF1 comes to replacing its bulkier DSLR sibling as the camera I sling around my shoulder before yomping into the Kyoto mountains to get a shot of a lesser spotted Japanese festival.

For that reason I’ve decided to write a comparison of the GF1 and the Nikon D40X DSLR I had been using until I upgraded to a full format camera.

These shots were taken in Kyoto’s Rokkakudo, a temple which used to be known as Kyoto’s Navel. It is situated near my studio in Karasuma Oike and was once the centre of the city. It contains a variety of small and detailed statues, large structures, external monuments and darkened cubby holes to truly put these cameras through their paces.

The first shot is a purification font under a wooden awning which throws it into harsh shadow under the midday sun. These temple features have tended to test the D40Xs metering to its limits so I was intrigued to see how the GF1 would handle the challenge.

For stat-fans the pancake lenses that are just 2.5cm long are often thought to be “slow”. This means they tend to have a small maximum aperture and take a long time getting the shot, meaning that photos taken inside Kyoto’s plethora of candle lit, incense enshrouded temples would end up blurred.This is the accepted wisdom.

Armed with this knowledge I still have no interest in kicking my coffee habit. On top of that tripods are usually banned. I’m fine with that rule for me because I prefer to shoot hand-held and with available light. Besides which I don’t want to be anywhere near a shrine crunch-point in the sakura season when a kid kicks over a tripod with an $8000 dollar Canon perched on it.

However, I needn’t have worried because Panasonic, white witches that they are, have created something that goes against convention by being good at everything it tries to do and lets me get that shot and then quickly get out of the way of sharp elbowed baa-chans and backpack swinging tourists with a refreshing deftness of footwork.
The lens shoots photos with a depth of field roughly equivalent to f3.4 on a full-format camera and the real focal length (lens plus body) ends up at around 40mm. Lenses like that are often used for, and are great at, portraits and street photography.

This camera doesn’t slow me down or weigh on my neck when I’m hiking up a mountainside to a hidden shrine. It doesn’t take a bag catch to the lens every five minutes when a tourist backs into me without checking their mirrors. It helps me be the photographic ninja that Kyoto’s tightest nooks and alleyways demand of me. It’s a refreshing change of pace. Literally.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/25sec 20mm

The answer is surprisingly well. The GF1 has metred a good shot of a shadowed enclosure on a sunny day and the lens is fast enough the get the shot without a great deal of camera shake.

Nikon D40X f3.8 1sec 23mm

The Nikon’s slower lens has gone for a similar brightness level but it has require a 1 sec exposure which has led to a blurred and unusable end result.

Panasonic GF1 f1.8 1/1000sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f5.0 1/100sec 19mm

What Of Rice and Zen does

Of Rice and Zen Studios is an umbrella under which I write for local expat magazines, write online for this magazine and sell photography both from my own stock photography library and from third parties.

I’m involved in other projects involving English and Japanese language education, videography and other visual arts, but the above are the main endeavours that have a direct relationship to my engagement with the GF1.

I love photography and love noise free images with lots of rich, deep shadows. I believe there’s a lot of artistry in post-production which is why I shoot RAW. It allows me to tease out and salvage an astonishing amount of information from the original image.

I love high quality images and processing them in Lightroom and Photoshop. For me nothing beats getting a good shot and nailing the perfect edit. It’s a process that I’m determined never to finish in the camera.
The balance of my workload changes occasionally but you could roughly divide it into 40% photography, 30% writing, 20% lecturing and 10% design and vector illustration. I run this website as a place to house my writing which encourages me to keep thinking about the next article. It also gives me a back catalogue of articles written “on spec” which I can then offer around to editors.

The website also forces me to keep on top of my photo editing and to display my latest work as Japanstock Photo of the Day articles or as pictures to illustrate a written piece.

The sidebars contain thumbnails that link to my online store at which I sell Japan-themed stock photography to advertisers, designers and anyone who needs photographic content for a project. As my page gets far less exposure than world famous stock agencies like Getty or iStock I also sell my images through them.

I tend to be working every waking hour. Doing this in the past would’ve been tough and at best would’ve forced me to travel with a pack-mule to contain all my equipment, but as the 21st century progresses the technological world creeps closer and closer to my professional ideal. Before undertaking this test I had my fingers crossed that the GF1 would put up a good fight against the digital SLR.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/640sec 20m

The entrance to Shinpuhkan is half interior and half exterior which has a habit of confusing older metering systems. The GF1 has exposed the shot pretty well and although its not a prize-winning shot it wouldn’t too long in post to fix the exposure.

Nikon D40X f6.3 1/160sec 18mm

The Nikon, as suspected, has blown the sky and underexposed the vestibule. Fixing this in Lightroom would be easy enough but would obviously add to the noise.

Working with the GF1

Most of the photos in this article were taken using the in camera metering on “P” mode. The reason is that from my own experience and that of interW3B comrades it seems the GF1 meters and shoots a tad brighter than most cameras in daylight situations. Of course, if you’re getting blown highlights in your shots you can simply press the dial on the top right corner of the camera and the dial the f-stop or shutter speed down a stop or two. These photos were left on the auto settings, however, and should act as a rough and dirty guide to the capabilities of both the lens and the automatic metering of the respective cameras.

Another tip is that although I would normally leave my cameras on aperture priority or manual modes to ensure I have full control over my depth of field, sometimes I find that I get better results in lower light situations if I leave the GF1 in shutter priority mode and keep my shutter fast to minimise camera shake. There’s a handy red bar over “danger” exposure lengths that are likely to cause blur, so that even without the onscreen histogram to warn me when I’ve pushed things too far so I can be pretty confident I’m getting usable shots.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/640sec 20mm

If you open the full sized images in two new tabs and flick between them you’ll notice that the GF1 shot is better exposed and significantly sharper than the Nikon, thanks to its fast, prime lens.

Nikon D40X f4.5 1/80sec 28mm

The Nikon shot, however, is similarly exposed and has much lower noise than its Micro Four Thirds cousin.

Panasonic GF1 f1.8 1/800sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f5.6 1/125sec 24mm

Behaviour

The clack of a DSLR shutter over Buddhist chanting in a hushed tatami room tends to attract people’s attention. When you hold a large DSLR to your eye you’re a menacing automaton. There’s machinery where your eyes should be.

The eyes are the windows to the soul and anyone who’s ever read a book on business or body language knows how much sunglasses, and even spectacles, can affect trust and cooperation.

Imagine, then, trying to build up enough rapport with a model you’ve met in the street to ask her to sign a release when you’re spending the majority of the time not looking her in the eye. The GF1 fits into a snapshot paradigm the model understands and tends to be more at ease with. A DSLR where your face should be gives the impression that you’re image hungry, perhaps mercenary.

I do not take shots of clearly identifiable people without permission, but even when it has been granted there’s almost always a strained look on the face of a non-professional model. It’s a look that says she is concerned and embarrassed by the attention the camera is drawing to her. Throw in a reflector and you’ve got expectations of Hollywood stardom and beauty in passers by that a Japanese woman enjoying a stroll in a kimono does not want placed on her shoulders.
Common concerns

“this guy’s got a pro-camera and is probably expecting pro-level modeling abilities from me and I have no idea how to pose”

“I do not know where he’s planning to use this shot or how much exposure it’s going to get”

“that camera’s giant lens is going to show up every pore I’ve got and I haven’t exfoliated today.”

These fears don’t disappear when you’re wielding a GF1, but the camera body subconsciously creates slightly different expectations in the subject. The subconsious assumption is that you’re clearly taking snapshots as memories, you’re not going to be selling or posting these shots anywhere that gets a lot of public traffic and you’re probably not cold and uncaring.

The features noticably relax as a consequence. If you make eye-contact with your model and banter with them while snapping away with a compact camera it is a lot easier to broach the subject of the model release. Everybody feels they have been part of a fun social interaction or, in my case, an international exchange rather than an impromptu photo shoot.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/30 20mm

Inside Rokkaku-do, which is similarly dim the GF1 lens has again risen to the challenge of taken a photo in the murk without the use of a speedlight.

Nikon D40X f4.0 1/4 24mm

The Nikon has chosen f4.0 for itself and again singularly failed to get the shot. One would obviously prefer to put the camera into manual, shoot at a larger aperture with a shorter shutter lapse and fix the darkness in post. No doubt the extra noise this would add to the shot would hand the victory to the GF1 again.

So how has the Micro Four Thirds format changed camera design?

The Micro Four Thirds format was developed by Olympus and Panasonic and puts high quality photography into a smaller package than has been possible before.

Traditionally the digital SLR cameras incorporated more components between the lens and the image sensor than film SLR cameras, such as the image stabilizer, dust reduction mechanism and low-pass filter. The viewfinder of an SLR camera also required a mirror box for viewing the image, meaning the flange back needed to be longer to accommodate the mirror box.

Up until now these factors have made it difficult to design SLR cameras that are as slim and trim as compact cameras. Compact cameras do not use the mirror box and therefore don’t require a long flange back.

The pay-off has been that the tiny sensors and poor lens quality has meant the images the cameras produce are far inferior to that achieved by SLR cameras. Poor depth of field, detail, contrast and color reproduction haven’t really bothered consumers before, but that might be about to change.

What was that book/cover cliche again?

In our experience most consumers we’ve shopped with have been more interested in the body of the camera than in the pictures it takes. With the photographic evolution that is taking place in consumer electronics stores today, there is now a middle ground photographers can recommend to non-photographer friends.

With the arrival of the Olympus Pen EP-2 and the Panasonic Lumic DMC-GF1 cameras almost as small as traditional compacts can now hold sensors 5 to 9 times larger your average point and shoot. Therefore, when an ultra-slim pancake lens is combined with the camera, it can be carried in a bag or jacket pocket without adding significantly to the bulk and weight of your ensemble.

Both the Nikon D40X and the GF1 can be used with an enormous variety of lenses (with the use of adapters) but I’ve fitted the kit lenses for this comparison to show you what kind of shots you can expect to get out of the box. The GF1 obviously comes with the 20mm f1.7 prime and the Nikon D40X came with the surprisingly awesome 18-55mm f3.5 Both of them are great lenses that give amazing results for the price and I’ve been delighted with them both.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/125sec 20mm

The GF1 shot came out quite well exposed with enough detail in the background highlights that I would be confident I could salvage the shot in post. I’m also blown away by the detail and sharpness in the paper cranes.

Nikon D40X f4.0 q/40 24mm

The Nikon has metered the paper cranes almost as well as the GF1 but the background highlights are blown and one suspects it would take a lot of saving.

It may seem like sacrilege to the hardcore among you, but for the less elitist GF1 owners there’s a handy iA mode. Flick the dial over to iA and the GF1 automatically activates a host of advanced functions and that are designed to help you get the perfect shot. And for once they don’t do a bad job.

Face Recognition

You can register the faces of the three people you photograph the most and the name will be displayed when the camera finds a match in the frame. The GF1 optimizes the focus and brightness for your friends’ faces. Use the shooting menu to turn on the face recognition and register your subject with a full-face portrait to get started.

AF Tracking

The AF tracking function latches onto a human face like a crazed pitbull and follows it around the frame – even when the subject is moving towards you at high speed, which is a notoriously difficult trick for even the most expensive camera to pull off. It’ll keep tracking until you hit the shutter release button.

Intelligent Exposure

The intelligent exposure feature corrects the brightness in the darker corners of the image when you use backlighting, a flash or simply have a shadowy shrine nook in your frame.

Intelligent Scene Selector

The camera has the traditional Portrait, Night Portrait, Scenery, Night Scenery and Macro modes, but the intelligent scene selector is good enough to intelligently select the correct mode to match the situation.

Face Detection AF/AE

This function adjusts the focus and exposure to properly capture a face when the camera recognises one in the frame. Which in no way replicates the Face Recognition function above. Be warned though that sometimes it’ll pick a random object that it thinks is a face and you’ll have to convince the GF1 to drop it.

Intelligent ISO Control

This mode claims to use ISO to prevent motion blur on your subject by adjusting the ISO to a higher sensitivity and quickens the shutter speed to get a faster shot if your subject moves as you snap the shot.

MEGA O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer)

Gyrosensors in the camera body detect and counter hand-shake and the optical image stabilizer shifts to compensate to make sure you get a clear shot. For the first time in history photography and coffee can mix.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/320 20mm

Off the bat we can see that the GF1′s 20mm lens at f1.7′s short depth of field which has given us a more appealing shot. The sharpness and exposure are great and the shot’s free of camera shake. This shot gives you a pretty good idea of how quickly the backgrounds fall away with the pancake lens. It gives the shots a composed, professional look. Granted the f-stop has a lot to do with that effect too, but out of the box it’s hard to take a bad shot with the GF1.

Nikon D40X f4.2 1/60sec 26mm

The Nikon shot, similary metered has gone for f4.2 giving it a longer depth of field making the subject unclear. Seeing these two pics at full size will give you a good idea of how the Micro Four Thirds camera’s sharpness compares to Nikon’s DSLR.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/1000sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f5.0 1/100sec 24mm

Tactility Perks

It is blissfully easy to forget the GF1 on my shoulder. The same cannot be said for the Nikon

It’s discreet even in the most quiet and cramped of Kyoto’s corners

I have the camera swung around my shoulder for days on end and the cube battery just keeps on going, RAW files and HD video don’t seem to phase it

The body is made from a cold, sturdy metal that feels beautiful – this is a tactile camera that feels utterly unlike a cheap compact

The GF1 has the most satisfying shutter action I’ve experienced since the Canon 7D – this may mean nothing to you but I can barely put the GF1 down because I just want to feel it fire again

I love how firmly the battery fixes in place before reassuringly sturdy hatch locks shut

The manual focus ring is slow, smooth and gives the perfect resistance

The understated body design eschews unsightly grips and is more pocketable as a result

So what does the GF1 afford the photographer that a normal compact doesn’t?

a smaller depth of field (for that film-like “the subject is in focus but the background is out of focus” look)

a greater dynamic range,

better low light performance

interchangeable lens compatibility, including almost all existing lenses

the ability to shoot RAW files instead of heavily compressed JPEGs.

Of Rice and Zen Studios likes to diversify and take on new roles on top of freelance writing, restaurant reviews, blog writing, publishing, stock photography, portraits, design and more. I have sometimes found myself without my DSLR at the crucial moment. When you have upwards of 5 jobs you can’t always pack for all of them.

Until now I wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to replace a full frame sensor DSLR camera with a Panasonic GF1 for stock photography, which has to be large format and noise-free, but I can tell you that it feels like a professional safety net to never have reason to leave the house with a camera in my pocket that can perform minor miracles like the Panasonic GF1.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/640sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.5 1/80sec 24mm

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/640sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.5 1/80sec 24mm

Bokeh

It is an unscientific observation, but I don’t think it’s without value to say that the depth of field and bokeh this lens gives me is utterly beautiful. I love it and frequently choose GF1 shots over my DSLR equivalents when I browse through them in Lightroom.

Bokeh is the word given to the quality and amount of deliberately out of focus parts of the shot. A wide aperture gives you a shallow depth of field, which means one plane of your image will be in focus, but everything nearer or farther than that object will be out of focus. Photographers and filmmakers often try to get their subjects’ eye/eyelashes in sharp focus and blur the foreground and background using a wide aperture and the shallow depth of field.
In movies this was done to draw your attention to the relevant information in the scene but it has become so pervasive that it now signifies glamor, quality, professionalism and a Hollywood aesthetic. It’s hard to make a bad image if you use this technique and the GF1 excels at it.

Photographers often refer to the quality of a photograph or lens in terms of “good bokeh” and there can be great beauty in the quality of the blur in an image. When I take a photograph I consider successful I usually aim to have 80-90% of the image is deliberate out of focus or soft.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/400sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.2 1/25sec 26mm

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/20sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.0 1/20 26mm

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/60sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.0 1/50sec 26mm

Also unlike some pancake lenses the 20mm focuses fast and nails it seemingly every time. Having read horror stories about prosumer cameras costing four times as much that regularly fail to find a focal point and produce soft images, I am relieved and not a little impressed with the speed and efficiency with which the GF1 hits its mark quickly and has never, in my experience, failed to find a focal point of some kind.

Kyoto temples have a complex array of shrine objects that fill each frame with multiple focus options and exposure challenges. The handily placed AE lock button lets me easily hold the exposure metering I want without taking my eye off my shot. When I want to give the autofocus a break a twist of the manual focus ring feels satisfying. The sturdy, smooth glide of the lens has enough resistance behind it to help me make fine adjustments without slipping too far. The LCD screen is bright and I’ve not yet found myself in a situation in which I’ve been unable to see what I’m shooting.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/400sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.5 1/80sec 26mm

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/100sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.0 1/15sec 26mm

My Actions

1. copy the background layer

2. add a high pass filter, set to overlay and fade to 35% to sharpen the image

3. add a curves layer to brighten the image

4. use a threshold layer to select the light clipped areas, then a levels layer to reduce the output and suppress the clipping

5. drag a copy of the background layer to the top and darken it using a curves adjustment

6. add a noise reduction filter to suppress noise and soften the whole image

7. add a reveal mask and paint it out to show the brighter, sharpened image where I want the focus of the image, leaving the rest vignetted and noise-free
My Workflow

Like most people, I’m not interested in the stats and specs of any gadget beyond its relevance to my life and work. I’m into technology to the extent that it can streamline my workflow, affect my behaviour and give me better images so how does the GF1 affect my day to day life?

The GF1 fitted snugly into my work-flow from the start. It has already proved the perfect companion piece to my restaurant reviews. I can whip it out in a restaurant and discreetly take food closeups in extremely low light. The fast. f1.7 lens gets me crisp and beautiful food closeups and to my great surprise camera shake has not been an issue. However using the GF1 instead of a DSLR has caused me to make a few changes to my workflow. I use the Photoshop action on the left to perform a series of tasks before I make photos available to buy as stock photography.

Using my existing action with GF1 has proved ineffective for two reasons:

the faster lens and better metering of the GF1 means the image comes out too bright. I have had to reduce the curves adjustment to compensate, which means my end results are less noisy

the GF1 images are so sharp that my faded high pass sharpening layer makes the image look over-sharpened. I’ve had to reduce the high pass layer to compensate.

Panasonic GF1 f1.7 1/500sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f5.0 1/100 26mm

If you’re into specs the GF1 uses a contrast based AF system and boasts these numbers:

Specifications
equiv. focal length (full format)	40mm
equiv. aperture (depth-of-field)	f/3.4
Optical construction	7 elements in 5 groups inc. 2x aspherical elements
Number of aperture blades	7 (circular)
min. focus distance	0.2m (max. magnification ratio 1:7.5)
Dimensions	25.5x63mm
Weight	100g
Filter size	46mm (non-rotating)
Hood	barrel-shaped, optional
Other features	Bodacity

Panasonic f1.7 1/500sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.2 1/60sec 28mm

Design Elements

I don’t take any days off because I love what I do and want to take it with me wherever I am. Now when I’m walking down the street I have, over my shoulder, a tiny camera that is capable of taking a photo that in many ways improves on the shots I’ve been taking with the Nikon D40X.
When I’m on the move I try to keep a hand on it. Why? Partly because in central Kyoto the narrow streets are dense with pedestrians and, more importantly, bicycles that can take out an expensive gadget or bag of shopping with ninja-esque effeiciency.

But the far more important reason for this is that when you’re on a shoot you have your eyes open and you’re ready to take aim before the shot is lost.

Panasonic f1.7 1/400sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f3.5 1/50sec 18mm

Sharpness and noise

As these rough and dirty test shots show the GF1 shots are not only larger than the Nikon’s but considerably sharper as well. Now you may well believe that the noise levels make them unusable as stock photography, but since I’ve been working with the limitations of the D40X I’ve learned a lot about how to make the most of the power under the hoods of Lightroom and Photoshop to make perfectly salable end results.

Some of my acquaintances choose to scale down the 4000 by 3000 pixel RAW file to a size that better hides the shortcomings of the camera, but I have no problem getting iStock quality shots out of the GF1. On the contrary I’m highly impressed by the sharpness of the images it has produced.

Panasonic f1.7 1/40sec 20mm

Nikon f3.5 1/40sec 18mm

The GF1 is your new reason to travel

I try to keep my job as mobile as possible and its likely that most readers are not doing the same, or don’t see the value in doing so. However, almost everybody who has traveled knows that a really good trip offers two things.

The first is unparalleled opportunities for dazzling, vibrant, surprising and exotic photography.

The second is an environment that is anathema to a bulky DSLR.

If airport throwers didn’t put you off in the first place perhaps the illogically tight airport controls (this seems to be most acutely problematic in the States), the high risk of theft, damage and knocks, the weight and bulk of a DSLR when doing any kind of strenuous activity in inhospitable environment might do.

For a more thorough look at how the GF1 measures up as a travel camera take a look at the great GF1 review on Craigmod.

Panasonic f1.7 1/500sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f6.3 1/160sec 18mm

The Faults

Of course the GF1 has a little way to go before becoming my perfect camera. There has already been talk of a three sensor Micro Four Thirds camera released later this year whose image quality will exceed the Canon 5D Mark II.

This is an amazing claim to make and the DSLR market may change beyond all recognition if it’s true.

For now though, despite having beautiful 720P video, the camera doesn’t record it in 24 or 25fps film and broadcast standards so some post production will be necessary if you want to use your footage for TV or movies.On top of that there’s no external mic input so that beautiful camera mics I have purchased with a standard audio jack, and of course that rip off Sony proprietary mic, are both now collecting dust. Luckily I’m carrying the GF1 I’m usually capturing video for Of Rice and Zen video features and tend to post-dub the audio anyway, so this doesn’t bother me much at this point in time.

However, if you have a more specific purpose in mind you should be aware that you’ll probably need to use an external audio capture device and sync the audio later. Although in all fairness that’s what’s most pros should be doing already. For most people wish to capture broadcast quality footage the Canon 5D Mark II and it’s progeny are going to be your first port of call, but the fact that the GF1 can even be considered anywhere near that hallowed company is a testament to Panasonic’s achievement.

Panasonic f1.7 1/80sec 20mm

Nikon D40X f4.0 1/40sec 26mm

The Death of Unitasking

I spend a lot of time on trains in Japan and I can’t afford to stop working while I commute, so I’m probably writing kanji mnemonics for my kanji study page, writing mini-English lessons for my Japanese Twitter feed to send to my Japanese photoblog and my Japanese teaching page. I’m also doing research into my next article or checking out future hardware additions for my stock photography business.

The pancake lens is shallow and fits easily into my jacket pocket and the side pocket of my bags. Recently, however I’ve found it so unobtrusive and easy to throw over my shoulder that more often than not I just wear it as part of my outfit when I go out. It’s always ready to pull and fire. This is the part of the GF1 that makes a difference to me.

If you’re walking down the street and you’ve made the GF1 a new limb, you’re already looking at the streets differently. You’re choosing and isolating a subject. You’re choosing a good angle. You’re looking at the places that are gonna give you atmospheric natural light. You’re looking for people who’ve got craggy, interesting faces like elephants. Or on the flipside someone who’s so flawless they could put Adobe out of business.
Cap’n Flint

You’re looking at every meal, every street, every building and every passing nondescript object as a subject. Now you don’t have to switch off your “photographer’s eye” just because you aren’t lugging your camera bag and lens collection with you.

Every object on the high street in a temple complex is a potential element to be worked into a future design and it’s much easier to work out how you’re going to render it in vector if you have a near SLR quality photo.

Now the GF1 lives on my shoulder like Cap’n Flint I can get those shots I used to miss. Before long you may find you’re being the photographer you like being more of the day. Buying the GF1 has changed my behaviour, my outlook and my workflow. That matters more to me than the chips and stats.

Edited photo comparison

If you were to take the Nikon images on display here, brighten them to match the GF1′s generally higher in-camera exposure metering and then sharpen them to try to replicate the detail offered by the 20mm prime lens and I strongly suspected you’d find the end result at least as noisy as the Micro Four Thirds camera.

In fact so sure was I of this that I decided to do exactly that to test the end results, so here is a comparison.

As you can see in the comparisons above the detail of the GF1 shots is superior to the Nikon and to achieve a similar level of sharpness with the Nikon would take a couple of extra steps in Photoshop. I tend to favour a faded high pass filter as the most successful low-noise sharpening method, but it’s nice to know I can essentially skip this step when editing my GF1 shots.

In my experience sharpening applied to a tiny focus area produces far more successful results than sharpening across the board. Un-selective adjustments like a sharpening filter would be overkill on the GF1 shot, would certainly add noise and perhaps even confuse the image, which I want to have a clear subject.

This is the GF1 original which has not been adjusted.

Here is the Nikon shot which has been brightened and sharpened enough to bring the central Jizo Sama’s face roughly into line with the GF1 shot. If you look at the original you can see that the red bib on the Jizo Statue looks like a soft image that has had artificial sharpening added to it. It is still distinctly soft. It is also, as suspected, considerably noisier than the Micro Four Thirds shot.

For a slightly more detailed look at those noise issues again, here is a crop of the GF1 shot, standing up quite well to intense scrutiny. Obviously the shot was taken in fairly good daylight at ISO 100, but I still find the results far exceed my expectations.

Here’s the Nikon shot at actual size and cropped so you can see the noise we have added to the bib in order to replicate the GF1′s faster lens. To me this is a fairly clear indication that all things are relative and that writing off the Micro Four Thirds cameras as “noisy” is dismissive of all the other factors in the equation. You don’t want to ignore the myriad things this pocket miracle gets so right.

Now I don’t have to compensate for exposure and sharpness shortcomings in post I am actually achieving less noisy shots than I was before. I couldn’t be more surprised or more delighted with the GF1. This is not just because of what it can achieve as a piece of technology. It’s not even that this camera heralds an extremely bright future for digital imaging. I love this little machine for how it has changed my lifestyle, my habits, my outlook and my workflow. I’m not sure whether to sum this up as the perfect blogger’s camera or traveler’s camera or perhaps even the perfect compact replacement. Perhaps that’s because I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t have a great deal of fun with the GF1 and who wouldn’t be pleasantly surprised at the results.