My dear friends,

Here are some images captured this past weekend in Kitadake, the second highest peak in Japan. A 2 days dash up the second highest peak in Japan at 3192m.

From the city of Koufu in Yamanashi prefecture, the bus needs about 2 hours along breathtaking mountain roads to reach Hiroigawara, the main gateway to Kitadake at 1500m high.

From there it takes about 5 hours of steep walking to reach Katanokoya, located at exactly 3000m, the peak can be accessed from them in another 30min or so.







During this trip, I carried my trusted Nikon d3x, a Nikkor 24 PC-E, Zeiss 100mm f2.0 and Nikkor 300 f2.8 VR. I used my usual tripod, a Gitzo GT5531s along with a RRS BH-55 head and RRS spherical pano head.

More images after the link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlangui...57622572350932/

Cheers,
Bernard

Gorgeous images the detail is incredible the locations magical. Awesome!

Lovely as usual, Bernard. Thanks for putting the effort in and then sharing the results with us.

Eric

Nice work. But I really like the last image with that band of light highlighting parts of the landscape in a bold way.

JMR

Bernard, I love, love, love that first one, with the mountain above the clouds. Stunning! I wish I was there.

Lisa

Love the last one.

The last one is the one I love. The contrast between the shadows and the colorful trees is fantastic.

Number two reminds me of the week I spent at the Fujiya hotel on R&R in 1954. It's an incredibly beautiful area. But I agree that number three is the best of the lot. It's a fine piece of work.

Beautiful stuff Bernard! The second here really gets me.

Cheers,

Christian

Absolutely stunning Bernard! I imagine the first image would look absolutely outstanding as a large print mounted on just about any wall. Beautiful work!

Thank you so much for your encouragin words.

I added a few more yesterday, among which this pano. I was just blown away by the ability of the d3x to handle pretty well the DR of this scene (probably the largest you can find in landscape work).



Another version of this image with infinite DoF is the works too, but that one will take some time to complete.

Cheers,
Bernard

Bernard,

Absolutely stunning photographs as usual.

I was out at this location the weekend before you.
We began our trek from Narada (950m) and climbed to the Notoridake (3,026m) staying at the Mountain Hut nearby.
The second day we walked along the ridge line crossing Ainodake (3,189m) to Kitadake (3,193m) before heading down Hirokawa to catch the bus back to where our car was parked at Narada.

During our decent on the Sunday afternoon, we passed someone carrying a sizeable (5 series?) Gitzo tripod and my friends started giving me a hard time that his was bigger than mine. I said that I would not be surprised if it was you (I had sent them a link to your Haute Route photos earlier in the week). Just a coincidence?

Unfortunately we thought the huts would be crowded/full so we carried full hiking gear (sleeping bags, mats, tents, stoves/food etc) so with my pack being 20kg I foolishly left my 70-200mmf/4 or 300DO at home. Could have really used the extra reach for the Mt Fuji shots and should have stitched for wider shots.

Are you able to provide some insight into your pano technique with the RRS gear?

Thanks for sharing your work.

Some great work, Bernard. Thanks for sharing them!

Mike.