Saw a few RF's during Japan trip

[julianphotoart]

Just a brief report on RF's I saw during recent Japan trip. I did not go to the camera-shop district in Tokyo.

We obviously visited a number of temples, shrines and castles. Zero rangefinders seen there. In fact, I only spied 2 film SLR's total (Pentax ME Super and Minolta 7000).

However, one Leica IIIc was seen at the Sony building in the Ginza district. Toyota had an incredible advertisement on the side of the building and everyone was gawking.

Then, the next day I saw 3 Leicas within 5 minutes at the Tsukiji market: an M8, an M7 and an M4. At that same market, I also saw a Fuji 645zi and a Bronica RF645.

That's it.

So out of 6 rangefinders seen in 8 days, 5 were seen within a total span of 10 minutes at one fish market (albeit a world-famous one).

[Donovan]

This reminds me of how many digicams and digital P&S's I saw on TV during the recent political campaign. Watching on TV it seemed that nearly everbody in the crowds were snapshooting with digital. They would have the cameras 12" in front of their face (in the typical digital way, looking at the LED screen) with a happy look on their face, and then bam - a bright flash! If I was going to a rally and got close enough to shake his hand why would I trust those shots to a digital camera bought at Circuit City? Oh well, the consumer has spoken and that's what they want. But how many of those shots are actually of any quality?

[jonmanjiro]

The Ginza is one of the camera shop districts. You'll spot people carrying interesting film cameras often in the back streets near the shops there.