I don't usually post twice in the space of a week, but then again I'm on holiday.

There's no such thing as a bad season for photography in Japan (with the exception of the rainy season), but summer is pretty good for getting that traditional Japanese vibe. There are festivals everywhere, and a festival means that everyone gets dressed up. Then you have all the typical festival stuff, mainly yatai (stalls) selling all manner of food, drink, toys and so on. And there's dancing. You can't have a Japanese festival without dancing.

Trouble is (from the perspective of the Sigma), this particular festival only starts at around 6 in the evening. Now in August, that's still reasonably light and you can get away with shooting at ISO 100...for a while. Once that period is over, though, then you have to start raising the ISO. The Sigma is fine at 200, OK at 400 and passable at 800 if you convert it to black and white. Once you get past that level, though, it's time to put the thing away.

Let's see what the Sigma does with this festival business...

A typical festival stall

...and another one

Coloured balls

More coloured balls

The police are present at these festivals, but this being Japan their role is primarily to keep things moving smoothly rather than to look out for trouble.

Masks

Some kind of kebabs...I think (I'm a vegetarian, so this is not my field of expertise)

More food stalls

Another thing that you'll see all over the place at festivals are balloons. Great to shoot.

Into black and white territory for the remaining shots (i.e. too dark to get good colour...plus the b/w conversion in Sigma's software is actually pretty good).

And to finish up, a couple of dance shots. These were tricky - it was dark, the Sigma isn't the fastest focusing camera even when it's light, and these people were moving around. Takes considerable persistence to get a decent shot under these conditions.

Thanks for looking. I hope to have some scanned Velvia shots from Hokkaido up in a couple of weeks, and there may or may not be some more stuff up in the meantime.