On stage in Kyoto’s Yasaka Jinja for Setsubun Festival on the 3rd of February 2010 maiko-san Miharu, Kanoyumi, Kanoka and Ryouka dance for their adoring public. Pictured in the centre of the frame is Kanoyumi from the Gion Higashi Hanamachi.

Thanks to Activatedfx for the illuminating comparison and of course hats off to Panasonic for the GF1, it’s a stunning piece of kit.

A change is upon the photography world that most consumers seem not yet to be fully conscious of and it revolves around the arrival of the Micro Four Thirds format. 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. The four thirds format has traditionally housed in a DSLR body meaning it was the choice of the pro or the dedicated hobbyist.

In our experience most consumers we’ve shopped with have been more interested in the body of the camera than the pictures it takes. With 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 pointa dn shoot. This affords the photographer 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 lenses, compatibility with almost all existing lenses and the ability to shoot RAW files instead of heavily compressed JPEGs.

Of Rice and Zen Studios is involved with various kinds of work, between freelance writing, restaurant reviews, blog writing, publishing, stock photography, portraits, design and more, we have frequently found ourselves without our DSLR at the crucial moment. When you have 5 jobs you can’t always pack for all of them. We wouldn’t dream 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 we can tell you that it feels like a professional safety net to never have reason to leave the house with a camera in our pocket that can perform minor miracles like the Panasonic GF1.
It’s addictive and… we guilty for saying it, fun. We’ll be posting a full feature on our workflow and how the GF1 fits into it in a forthcoming feature, but for now suffice it to say that we’re a little bit enamoured with Pansonic’s handiwork and we’re very much looking forward to the future of the Micro Four Thirds format.

Following on from my recent article iPad as iPad I thought I’d look again at the Japanese market. Since I published that article Apple have taken it upon themselves to become a lot more prudish in the way they maintain the app store and while I agree that heavy handed involvement in the app store has been a necessary part of the success of the iPhone, I wonder how this very American approach to freedom of speech will affect the iPad’s performance in Japan.


First, let’s look at the Japanese market. I have an (pseudo)HD cable for my Gamecube that doesn’t work with my TV because the connector is a technology that only ever took off in Japan and has now been superceded by the universally accepted HDMI. A D-Terminal or D-tanshi (Ｄ端子) is a type of analog video connector found on Japanese consumer electronics, typically HDTV, DVD, Blu-ray, D-VHS and HD DVD devices. It was developed by the EIAJ (Electronic Industry Association of Japan) in its standard, RC-5237, for use in digital satellite broadcast tuners. I’ve looked from that cable to my HDMI monitors longingly so many times wishing it had been made by a company in a place that was a little more forward thinking. That is a defining feature is Japan’s relationship with technology.

Japan sinks its teeth into proprietary technologies that are doomed to catch on nowhere but in Japan. Once established the Japanese Market is loathe to relinquish them. Their mobile internet is a prime example. Most Japanese people I’ve spoken to have been led to believe emoji weren’t available on the iPhone and that they’d constantly “butt-dial” people because of the exposed screen. When I show them that neither of those are major concerns they almost always say they want the mobile versions of webpages rather than the pages themselves. This is of course a bit like your grandma refusing to relinquish her black and white TV. So Apple et al have to decide whether to pander to these whims or wait for the Japan’s developers and consumers to embrace the smartphone generation.

In the west there is a misconception that Japanese mobile phones are “advanced”. In Japan, when the mobile internet market was first establishing itself, mobile phone bandwidth was free to the carriers which meant that i-mode quickly became a huge hit. In England this was not the case and i-mode was buried alongside WAP. But to call Japanese cellphones, the applications they run or the UI that the user battles with “advanced” would be misleading. Profitable, yes. Heavily used by commuters because talking aloud on public transport has traditionally been unnacceptable, certainly. But advanced? Let’s look at the evidence.

Other problems for the iPhone and iPad include Japan’s love affair with 1seg TV. 1seg is a 15fps and 320×240 pictures Mobile TV broadcasting format that is only used in Japan (Brazil’s is 30fps). Moreover 1seg is not a viable mobile technology because it requires the receiving device be almost static. Mobile reception is inconsistent in a vehicle moving at speeds of around 20 km/h (12 mph) or more in a mountainous country like Japan. The signal quality deteriorates quickly as the device moves from the transmitting station and can be interrupted by buildings etc. On flat land without such obstacles and with a stationary receiver reception is more consistent. So we’re talking about a mobile format that, in Japan, lacks mobility. This is akin to becoming a vet despite being allergic to cats. It is unlikely the rest of the world is going to embrace this inelegant format given the developments being made towards HD touch screen devices and the video capabilities of HTML 5.