Mino is a small city in Gifu prefecture, mainly known for paper (traditional Japanese paper) manufacture. It also has a temple with some quite spectacular autumn leaves, and we got lucky with the weather when we went yesterday.

The D3S and the Digilux 2 both got to see some action. Everything was shot RAW / NEF and converted through Photoshop's ACR and with the odd tweak in Aperture. I also found that even a camera with sensor cleaning has problems with dust spots in certain cases. Fortunately Aperture's "retouch" tool got rid of those very nicely.

For the most part I'm not going to indicate which camera took which shots. Some people will be able to tell by looking and some won't. Doesn't really matter in the end, as long as the picture is nice.

There are a lot of shots in this entry. First section is the temple and surrounding area, next is the road into Mino town centre, next is the town itself and last is a few shots just for the D3S to show off.

Anyway. First, the colours at and around the temple area.

Couldn't resist getting a shot of this man

There were a few mini-waterfalls scattered about

Following this, we went to the town of Mino itself via a nice walking route which included an old bridge - so old, that it actually had a warning on it saying in effect "no more than 20 people on this bridge at one time or it'll collapse". Luckily for us we were the only two on the bridge. Old it may have been (early Taisho, so around 1910-20), but it was pretty photogenic.

Also around here was a lookout post (I thought it was a castle at first, but the taxi driver who was taking us into town informed us that it was basically an observation platform). We didn't go up to it, but the platform and its surroundings made for some nice shots

More general shots from around this area:

The water was incredibly clear and clean-looking

Upon entering Mino's "town centre" (essentially a few streets), we chanced upon a store with some men making traditional cultural items. They didn't seem to mind being photographed.

Once of their creations:

While some of the men were working, others were chanting (I don't know exactly what, probably sutras or some kind of religious song) in the background. While I'm not a videographer, the D3S does have a rudimentary video mode and I wanted to see what it could produce. The link to the video is here. It's handheld and a bit shaky, but you can make out what's going on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8588exenBl0

Detail from smaller local temple

Entrance to typical Japanese building

Then the moon did us a favour and came out. The sky was still light, and in conjunction with the local scenery the moon looked great. This is the one time I'm going to mention which camera did what: all the moon shots were D3S. The Digilux 2 was beginning to struggle with the light and there was very notable noise in the sky and shadow areas once I put in the fill light in ACR. So the moon shots are all Nikon.

This shot below is a case in point. I took a very similar shot with the Digilux 2 at ISO 200, but once I raised the fill light in ACR (to get back the shadow detail) the noise in the shadow parts was terrible. Whereas here...noise? Where?

Finally, while waiting for the bus back, I had to take what I call a "because I can" shot. This was also the D3S because...well, because it could and the Digilux couldn't. The Digilux is a cracking little camera when the light's sufficient, but once it gets semi-dark you may as well put it away. This is a shot of five stone...things with some super-swirly bokeh in the background. No reason to take it other than "because I could"

Likewise, Mino has a cute little station where the trains usually consist of one single carriage. When I heard one approaching, I tasked the D3S with getting a blurred shot of it behind some foliage. "That's all?" it huffed arrogantly. "Brain the size of a planet and all you want is a blurred train shot in low light? Hmmph".

Lastly, this is from the bus. Again, a "because I could" shot. There was next to no light outside, but when I saw a road leading into a town I thought "I bet the D3S can handle that". I had to smooth it out with noise reduction and use unsharp mask later, and frankly it's not much of a picture. Just wanted to let the D3S show off a bit.

If you got through all those pictures and are now reading this you have my gratitude. Thanks for reading!