Second-hand lenses and more from Kobe

Since I was very impressed with the sharpness and wide aperture of the Sigma 30mm lens I bought in September, I started thinking about whether it might be worth buying some cheap second-hand prime lenses. The Olympus E-system doesn't have much in the way of prime lenses within my budget, but the earlier Olympus OM system had a wide variety of manual focus lenses that are still floating around. Adorama sells a selection but I figured that it might be worth seeing what I could pick up at used camera shops in Japan first. In preparation I made a list of the interesting-looking OM lenses and sample prices to take with me.

A quick search brought me to a Flickr page with information about used camera shops so it was off to Osaka to see what I could find! The first stop was Yodobashi Camera near JR Umeda station, which doesn't sell used lenses but I wanted to check out. I was hugely impressed. B&H here in New York is certainly great but the Umeda Yodobashi camera surpassed it for me ... being able to walk in with your own camera and try out their sample lenses without even having to ask a sales clerk blew my mind!

Next it was time to look for used camera shops. After searching for a while I found Marushin under JR Umeda station, which has a wide variety of secondhand lenses for various brands, but I didn't feel like spending more than Y12,000 (about $120) for an OM-to-Four Thirds adapter to be able to mount an OM lens on my E-520. I decided to go elsewhere and spent the next hour or so fruitlessly walking around in the rain looking for the next-closest shop, and then checking out a couple of stores I found by accident, before giving up and getting on the subway for Namba. I had planned to go there to take some photos in Nipponbashi but almost as soon as I got out onto the street I came across a branch of the Naniwa Camera chain so I went in. They had an Olympus Zuiko 135mm f/3.5 lens for Y4,000 and an adapter for Y6,000 so for about $100 I was able to pick up a useful-looking lens. The shopkeeper's  explanation of the lens quality was interesting and frank (A+ is like new, A is not so new, A- looks old but works fine, B is good, C is terrible, don't buy it), I settled for a B+ lens. Even though I found out that I had forgotten to put the battery back in my camera after recharging it, I went back to Kobe satisfied!

A couple of days later I decided to see what camera shops in Kobe had to offer and went to Matsumiya Camera near JR Kobe station. I wasn't really sure what to expect but the store took me by surprise:

Matsumiya Camera, Kobe, 16mm f/5.6, ISO 100

That's the entire storefront, taken with my Olympus 14-42mm lens, but the inside of the store was even more surprising: it was stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes, cameras and display cases for lenses, and there was only room for three people inside, including the owner! During the thirty minutes or so that I was there was usually a line of people waiting outside the door to get in. Once I got inside I asked the owner if he had any Olympus OM lenses and he pointed me to a display case, I noted the 50mm f/1.8 and 200mm f/5 lenses and asked if I could try out the 200mm. He took it out of the case and helped me put it on the camera and then suggested I go outside and try it out. It was very sharp but I decided to pass on it since there is also an f/4 version available, and tried out the 50mm:

Matsumiya Camera, 50mm f/1.8, ISO 100

Apart from the row of cameras at the top, those are all lenses! The image quality isn't so great, but I didn't know what I was doing with the lens at that point, it's much sharper than that. I tried it out for a few minutes and decided that for Y3,500 it wasn't such a bad buy. This time I had to wait in line for five minutes before I could actually pay for it, though.

I had an hour or so to kill so I wandered in the direction of the main shopping district, on the way I came across an interesting shopping arcade underneath an elevated railway line. These arcades under railway lines are a feature of Japanese cities but this was under a small suburban line so it was a small arcade, filled with small speciality shops:

Shop window, Kobe, 30mm f/2, ISO 100 

This is the back window (facing outside the arcade) of a shop selling electrical goods. These seem to be old electrical fittings.

Right after I took this photograph, as I was getting my bearings after crossing a street I was approached by an elderly gentleman (he looked like he was in his seventies) who seemed to want to talk to me about something or other. I had trouble following exactly what he was trying to get at, though at one point he said, "It's good that you understand Japanese" (I hadn't said much at that point though I guess I'd been nodding as he was speaking). Then he suggested that we could go to a yakiniku (barbecue) restaurant around the corner, so I declined as politely as I could, but I felt rather sorry for him, since I imagine he must have been rather lonely to strike up a conversation with an obvious foreigner. A few minutes later I saw him walking along beside some woman who I suppose he had also accosted. To put this in perspective, on the train from Tokyo to Kobe I sat next to a businessman for an hour and a half who studiously ignored me, despite the fact that I was trying my best to read a newspaper in Japanese and he was reading an English language textbook.

Shoes, Kobe, 30mm f/2, ISO 100

This is another one of the shops in the arcade. It's hard to be sure, but only the right shoe of each pair seems to be on display (which makes sense from a space-saving point of view, if you think about it). When I showed my wife this photo she said "That's a good one!".

Update: Since people seem to be coming to this post looking for camera stores in Kobe, here's the address of Matsumiya Camera: Shin-Kobe Building, 2-8 Aioichou 2, Chuo Ward, Kobe (near Kobe Station, map). I also have a post with some more details (and a better map) from a later visit.