- The noise. So much noise.

- Walking into Sakuraya thinking it was a branch of Bic Camera ! I only noticed the difference when I saw the logo on the price stickers. I really can’t decypher hiragana !

Are there still girls wearing loose socks, or were those girls just dressing up?

Looking at today’s photos, many were taken with the Nikkor 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens. I bought this when I was asked to take photos at the Soccer match in Yoyogi Stadium. This was the cheapest, good, lens I could buy that would have the distance to reach the players without me putting on a shirt and entering the pitch .

I have always found the focus quick and accurate on this 70-300mm lens and got a pleasing amount of bokeh without going overboard.

With regard to settings, I really am a basic beginner. but love to see still moments of life on the street, so enjoy taking the photos. I would like to learn as much as I can to show everyone better shots of Shibuya as well. The first time I took the camera off automatic was to adjust the weight balance when shooting into the sun for Gundam shots. The second time was when I bought the Sigma lens and the store assistant told me to manually switch to f1.4 to test the lens. Then I read your comment and realized I had left it on f1.4 when I didn’t actually need it.

I hadn’t realized I was shooting at 3200 ISO to be honest. I was still taking in the comments you made about aperture . I will check the camera setting for auto-iso. I think I read about that the other day.

It’s great to have your comments like the other day and today. It helps me to understand and learn about the camera, lenses and taking photos. There is lots to remember, but it is worth it.

I will check the sites you mentioned and recalibrate camera and my mind for another photo shoot in Shibuya shortly. I hope we can see some improvements over time as I get a bit more knowledgeable. As long as people want to keep seeing Shibuya Streets then I’ll keep at it.

Thanks so much. Your comments are really helpful and I am sure the other members of the site appreciate you assisting.

My golfing buddy took the shot of me in it. It does look a little 3D doesn’t it? I don’t normally use a tripod as it is a pain to carry around. I would like to go into the countryside and take pictures of trains. Then I will take the tripod.

I have more pictures. My favorite area is Shibuya and I just worry that you guys might get bored of the same subject matter all the time.

My least fun center gai memory; being harassed by Nigerians to come to buy clothes at their shops.
Actually, they are concentrated on that very same spot you are in that self-portrait of yours at night !

OK. Now for some photo comments as per usual a bit critical
1. For most part great framing on these pictures; I like them alot. Like the two girls crossing, the girls taking pictures on the crossing with nice bokeh, and a personal favorite; taking pictures of people interacting with other people unaware of you ! This gives it a more dynamic feel; like the picture of the girl with her B/F talking to another girl ( you so did not shoot that with 50mm that’s borderline stalker haha) If you get good at taking those kinda pictures; you will be ace. Just like the one with the girls and loose socks.Tough I would’ve re-shot the center gai shot where the guy was infront of you all of a sudden and out-of-focus. He shouldnt be the main focus of the pic but due to him being out of focus; he is. Aside from that, nice framing shot.

2. ISO3200 in daylight ? huh ! never *ever* use more ISO than you need to to avoid grain. You downsized the images to 900x something, so the full sized shot must have had some grain in there
Looking at the metadata on ISO 3200 you usually had a shutter of 1/2000 to even 1/5000 stopped down to around F/4
I can imagine you wanted to have high-shutter speeds to “freeze” people. But 1/500 is enough to freeze even waterdrops so you could have lowered your ISO. You can adjust your auto-iso setting if you want to to only bump the iso up to achieve a minimum shutter of 1/500 ; check out the manual. That way if your in a “hurry” you will never “over ISO”

3. Your Sigma isn’t as sharp as it should be. I personally had a Sigma 35 1.4 and its much sharper than this.
Do a flickr search on D700 + Sigma 50 1.4 combination to compare results.
I mentioned the bad quality-control issues of Sigma in another post. You can test this yourself by doing the following test: http://focustestchart.com/chart.html – If you do have a frontfocus/backfocus issue on your lens, you can do two things.
1) Use the AF focus adjustment option on the D700 to adjust the issue. +20 seems to work for most ppl according to google.
The AF system can be fine-tuned on the D700 for up to 12 lenses, it autodetects the lens so once set. No need to re-configure.
Look it up in the manual.
2) Bring it back to Sigma for re-calibration; this takes 45 minutes. Bring your D700 with you so they will fine-tune it for your body.
Should maximise it’s capabilities and you should be entitled to it if it turns out to have those issues after you do the test.

Sorry that it AGAIN turned out into a long story LOL.
Aside from all that, keep up the good work ! Love seeing the Shibuya shots. It’s such a fascinating corner of the world !