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Year End News

The year 2005 is drawing to an end and life gets quiet. Approaching the end of the year is always a special time in Japan. The Christmas decorations were thrown out on the 25th and the year end cleaning is starting. Then a week of quiet celebrations with family and friends.

We have done some housekeeping and updated EMS shipping options. Due to a rise in orders from these regions, Asia, Oceania (AUS, NZ), Africa and South America have now their dedicated prices. This should make your shopping more concvenient and you will know the exact cost, wherever you are. Please choose accordingly on checkout.

Due to the public holidays, all orders placed on or after Dec 29th, 2005 will be processed from Jan 10th, 2006.

Megaperls Webshop wishes everyone happy holidays and a prosperous 2006.

Light Reading

From Germany #1

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JOBO Duo Set 2502

Merry Christmas!

As you can see I am already preparing for the new year with a slightly changed site. I grew a little tired of Movable Type, never bothered upgrading to version 3, so I thought I should try switching altogether. So far so good, it was very easy to switch it over, just need to work on the looks of it now.

Meanwhile, it is time and there is time for some film processing at Christmas. As I have mentioned before, I bought a Jobo 2500 series drum for processing sheet film a while back. When I got it, they included two Duo Set 2502 reels for 35mm and 120 size film. The whole drum takes five reels in 35mm setting, but in Japan these reels are prohibitively expensive (about Â¥6000 ea.). So while in Germany I managed to buy three more of them and I will try for the first time processing with this setup. I have never tried processing 35mm in a rotary processor, so let’s see how it goes. With five at a time, I may be able to clear my backlog soon – if it all works out.

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Face in the mirror

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Taken at Uniqlo in Kashiwa using my “new” 24mm/2.8, inexpensively bought from a very friendly individual on Yahoo! Japan auctions (sent me the hood and a polarising filter with it; can a polariser be used on a digi? Suppose so. Realise more and more that the digicam behaves mostly like slide film). The guy said something along the lines of that this lens works great on film cameras, but a bit blurry on a DSLR. Not sure what he meant by that, so far I find it very crisp. It is also very compact making the camera and lens a small and nice package. Lens looks ancient thought (90s design and well used), but works well. I found myself using the low end of my 28-105 most of the time, i.e. for the more interesting pics, so why not go fixed lens altogether? And yes, the 24mm should make a nice length on a film camera as well… another time.

Shop News

Autumn leave

We will be taking a short autumn break and take care of family matters. No orders will be processed between Nov 11th and Nov 27th, 2005. All orders placed until 6pm Japan time on Thursday, November 10th will be fulfilled as normal, all others after the 27th.

Thank you for your understanding.

UPDATE: we’re back and continue taking and processing orders. Thank you.

Shop News

Happy birthday

Megaperls Webshop turns one year old today! Big thanks go out to everyone who browsed, purchased, linked, recommended and inquired. In fact, October saw so much traffic, that for a period of 12 hours or so this site went unavailable due to all bandwidth of the hosting package been used for the first time. Apologies for the disruption, but it came as a surprise and the bandwidth limits are increased as a consequence.

It has been a successful year with several hundreds of customers and shippings to four continents of the globe. We have not had a single lost package or other problem in all that time, which is something I am particular proud of.

We continue to expand the selection. There has never been a better time to enjoy film photography, despite the gloomy news from other places (Agfa, Ilford, Kodak). Japan is still going strong, and with the very favourable exchange rates at the moment with US Dollar and Euro at a high, this is THE time to shop and stock up on film and other material.

Thank you for your patronage and trust since November 2004.