A Day as a Tourist with a 6×4.5 Camera

Some night views of Tokyo on medium format

I’ve been living in Tokyo for a few years now, and I usually try to avoid all the famous tourist spots — by now they’re overcrowded and thoroughly documented by photographers, YouTubers, and influencers of every kind. But this time was special: I was spending the day with Floris and Nu for their upcoming season of Ovunque Sardi.

So off we went to visit places like Ueno, Akihabara, and Asakusa, wrapping up the day with a visit to the top of the Sky Tree — something I hadn’t done yet.

With this plan in hand, I got ready, loaded my Fuji 645 with a roll of Portra 400, and hoped for the best.

The start of the day wasn’t very interesting from a photographic point of view — the cherry blossoms hadn’t bloomed yet — so I tried to save my shots for the Sky Tree, scheduled for sunset.
The first shot is of the pagoda in Asakusa, followed by one of the Sky Tree just before we went in.

At the entrance, they checked our bags and told us tripods weren’t allowed. I had planned to take some long exposures that really needed a tripod… painful moment.

Once at the top, though, the view was breathtaking. Tokyo, vast and endless all the way to the horizon. Sadly, it wasn’t one of those deep red sunsets we often get, but still — an unforgettable experience.

All the night shots were taken using whatever I could find to prop the camera on, with a max shutter speed of 1 second.

Since I hadn’t finished the roll and still wanted to shoot more night scenes, I headed to the Eitai Bridge area the following week to try some long exposures — this time with a tripod.

These scans were done by me — still working on my dust removal technique — but overall, I’m pretty happy with the final results. I ended up with 15 usable shots, all published here.