As a brief respite from the rather brutal Nagoya summer, we spent a few days up in Hokkaido visiting my in-laws. Among the things we did to pass the time (they live in the very definition of "countryside", and there's generally not a lot going on) was a kendo tournament in which my nephew was participating. I figured I'd take the Sigma along and see if I could get anything with it. I wasn't optimistic (action is not really the Sigma's forte), but nothing ventured...

Initially I put it on aperture priority, which is how I shoot 95 per cent of the time. No dice. The gymnasium was relatively dark, but the sun outside was extremely strong and it was coming in through the windows full power. If I metered for the gym, the highlights blew to oblivion and back, and if I metered for the highlights, the gym basically disappeared. So I had to take over, put it in manual, and try and find a compromise. Eventually I did - the highlights were bright, but managed to avoid total 255-land, and the kendoka (kendo fighters) were more or less silhouetted. It was actually quite a cool effect.

Anyway, here are the results. As I am now subscribed to Adobe CC cloud, I figured I'd experiment with Lightroom as well as using my usual Photoshop post processing routine.

Etiquette being very important in the Japanese martial arts, let us end with a bow.

The next post will be somewhat more "outdoorsy" and feature the very pleasant Hokkaido countryside.

Thanks for looking!