Maybe funny, maybe a bit scary

This was a two hour bike endurance race that Atsushi, Masaru, Hirohito and myself participated in on Saturday. Held at Suzuka Circuit, it was interesting seeing so many race bikes in such a small space.

Our team came 55th out of 79 teams (there was meant to be 87 teams but 8 didn’t show). Out of our team, I somehow managed to beat Atsushi’s laptime. While he did a 12 point something and a 13 minute lap/s, I did a 12 and a 12 point something. The winner (a solo rider) managed 14 laps, whereas we only managed 9. Our team was one minute away from starting a 10th lap when the two hours were up. I reckon if we start near the front of the pack (we started right at the back, +1 min), and had a few adjustments to the bike, the team can do 10 laps next year

Official results:

http://cycle.powertag.jp/
↓
8月30日(土)->2時間エンデューロ->2時間エンデューロ フラッ
トバー
↓
enter our No.959 and Push the Search Button(検索)
↓
★2時間エンデューロ フラットバー

55位 959-PACIFICA RACING
Time 2:01:04.85
laps 9周(nine laps)

Oh yeah, and it was raining!

Some idiot threw my bike over the balcony last night. Was very silent too - I must have been in bed when it happened - I thought I heard someone, but it didn’t sound suspicious. Two other bikes on my floor were attacked - one was chained to the apartment’s window bars so it’s just sprawled on the ground, and another from the same apartment (my neighbours is halfway down the stairs, next to the lift. I just checked the other floors, and no other bikes are effected. An interesting fact is that the bike nearest the elevator, owned by an Indian couple, was untouched. The damage seems to be a buggered rear wheel (the tyre is amazingly still inflated), and the gears have completely snapped from the joint.

I live on the 7th floor, and it landed on a roof on the 4th story. I’m happy this didn’t happen last month

Here is a list of places and activities I did over the Japanese Summer school holiday period (6 weeks) from the 19th of July till the end of August.

Had a BBQ and watched the fireworks at the Gamagori Matsuri Noryo Fireworks Festival.
Donned a Yukata and saw the fireworks at the Nagoya Minato Matsuri Fireworks Festival at Nagoya Port.
Saw Hakuho at the Nagoya Sumo Tournament.
Attended the World Cosplay Summit 2008 in Oosu and Oasis 21, Nagoya.
Went to Hiroshima to witness the Peace Memorial Ceremony on the anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
Saw inside the 7km Mazda factory.
Took a day trip to Miyajima; famous for it’s floating gates (torii). Walked up the 535m Mount Misen.
Explored Himeji Castle.
Went to Nara to see the Festival of Ten Thousand Lanterns at Todaiji, the biggest buddha in Japan inside the Daibutsuden, and the Obon Mantori at the Kasuga Grand Shrine.
Briefly saw the Daimonji Gozan Okuriki Bonfire Festival in Kyoto, unaware that bonfires apparently only last for half an hour.
Contemplated the Zen rock garden at the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.
Saw some cool fighting robots at the Japanese SciFi Convention, Daicon 7 in Osaka.
Found that the Ninja demonstration at the Ninja Villiage in Iga Ueno does not demonstrate Ninjutsu - only Kenjutsu and Shurikenjutsu, the latter of which they teach the kids by literally saying point and throw (scary to see uncontrollable metal shuriken flying around the room).
Rode in the 2 hour Shimano Suzuka Road Endurance Bike Race, and got the fastest laptime of any of my teammates.
Went inside the Fuji Antarctic exploration ship, and the Nagoya Maratime Museum.
… and a few other bits and pieces.

Things to do this month on the weekends:
Head to Gifu, Nagashima Spaland, and perhaps the Asahi Beer Factory…

The best new visual technologies relating to photography from Siggraph.

Finding Paths through the World’s Photos
This is similar to Microsoft’s photosynth technology.

And what I think is really cool and could be the digital camera technology of the future:
Programmable Aperture Photography: Multiplexed Light Field Acquisition

This means that it looks like someone’s worked out a method of digitally refocussing, readjusting the depth of field, and slightly changing the tilt and pan of a photo that has already been exposed.
Instead of having a single hole aperture, they replace it with an array and.. well.. watch the video

Lastly this method of editing objects in video is brilliantly simple.
Microsoft Unwrap Mosaics

via HackADay

Last December (2007), just after I moved into my apartment in Marunouchi, we tried some different furniture arrangements in the lounge room. The first arrangement had both Ben’s and my sofas in the lounge, with the table next to the wall - homely but with the kitchen kind of separated by the two sofas. The second arrangement which has in been in place ever since has had the table in the middle of the room between the two balcony doors, and my sofa in my room. We agreed this gives a bigger perception of space, and given everything’s so cramped, it’s nice to have a fairly spacious lounge room (rare in an apartment of this size/rent).

Here are some photos taken of the first and second arrangements.

From the North-East looking South-West:

From the North looking South:

From the West looking East:

My journey of seeking what’s artistically possible at the edge of current technology (at a cheap price), is always fun. While my 360 degree photos and little planets have been coming along nicely over the past year (yet to be officially posted and written about), here is something else I’ve been working on.

Inspired by Rožnov | The Timelapse, recently I’ve been experimenting with timelapse animation techniques with my still camera. Usually a timelapse is performed from a static location, using a some sort of tripod. Traditionally moving the camera results in terrible stuttering from the camera’s changing point of view, unless the tripod is on a dolly, some kind of rail, a vehicle with suspension / or has some kind of movement buffering. As tripods are not allowed in many places in Japan, and me always trying something insanely difficult, I’ve been working on a purely handheld technique.

My tests so far have used no stabilisation or weight added to the camera, but during post-processing in Virtualdub I’ve used Thalin’s Deshaker to remove any unwanted shudder. After many tests now, it comes really as no shock that using some sort of weighted mini-tripod or steadicam apparatus is truely beneficial for good results.

Using a fisheye lens, far away objects don’t move as much within the frame as with normal size lenses, so naturally, starting off with my 8mm peleng lens seems like good place to begin. For all of these I haven’t worried about final output fps, so all these are at the standard NTSC video frame rate of around 30 frames per second. I’m thinking 15 or 12 fps might be better, perhaps with some interframe temporal smoothing, but as youtube is as it currently is that’s something I can work on.

My first attempt was at Nagoya Station just after Christmas, when the lights were still up. I tried a photo every metre sideways while I walked around the lighting area, keeping the twin towers in the center of frame as much as possible, with extra shots at the beginning and end for an accelerating and decelerating ‘dolly’.

The motion was very good, but a few stuttering moments caused the tower to ’sway’. Youtube for some reason wants my video to be upside down, so apologies about that.

My second test was many months later at Suzuka circuit, watching the Super GT. Being a test this was a very very short timelapse, perhaps only 20 seconds of real time (at one photo a second). Longer is always better, but it’s all a learning process. Although the original file is in HD quality, youtube really overcompresses the video, resulting in a very blocky image. For higher quality open the video in another window and click high quality. Perhaps I’ll reupload these to another video hosting site, perhaps vimeo.

My third test was naturally over a longer period of time, this time at the Nagoya Dome. Unfortunately I ran out of memory on my SD card and didn’t have any spares on me. As these photo sequences are geared towards animation, I realise that I don’t have to shoot them at full camera resolution for HD output. Additionally, as I walked around the dome, the security guards kept asking me for my ticket to see where I was sitting, so I had to stop and tell them I was sitting ‘over there’, (where my ticket is), and they let me through. These sudden stoppages messed up the flow of the video point of view, as well as the on-pitch action. A good test nonetheless.

Next I tried using my Dad’s 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. It’s a really short clip, as the rest of the photos had too much foreground action to successfully attached for motion. This was taken in the Meitetsu express train somewhere between Ichinomiya and Nagoya, Aichi.

At Sobue Junior High School, this next one was a test for a looping video, but near the end a loose softball came into vision and I thought it interesting to follow the student picking it up. Also being very sunny, the peleng lens got a big lens flare as I didn’t have an umbrella on me. I might try this one again another time.

I went to Hiroshima on the sixth of August for the A-bomb memorial ceremony. While I was there I took a walk around the entrance of the museum/park, taking a photo with every step.

The next day on the island of Miyajima, I took two timelapse sequences on the gondola - from the top of the mountain to the first station, and from there to the bottom. In the top gondola there was a window that could be opened so I rested the camera on the gondola frame, so this one is not handheld. I should have started filming a few seconds earlier, but as the cabin was filled with people, I did the best I could being merely a tourist. Although there is a bit of jitter (which can be taken out) the raw result, I think you can agree, is very very nice.

As for the bottom half of the mountain, the gondola cabin had a window that couldn’t be opened, so I had to shoot through the glass handheld as still as possible. This is the longest timelapse I’ve done so far, a good ten minutes of holding the shutter down. I forgot I had my external shutter release in my bag. It looks really nice in full HD, but for some reason Vimeo’s only showing it in a low resolution.

The last attempt was again with the 50mm prime lens, but this time in the shinkansen (bullet train). Here you can see three minutes of real time in about seven seconds. As the clouds were rushing by very quickly, I thought it might turn out as an interesting animation.

The result was not the best, but making the motion smooth search based on excluding pixels less than 60% white made an alright result.

That concludes the current progress of my timelapse animation experimentation. More to come as time and new experiences are exposed.