PENTAX LXと巡る、桜川・真壁の路地さんぽ

Makabe is a town with a long history, spreading across the northern foot of Mt. Tsukuba in the southern part of Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture. It grew around the castle of the Makabe clan, who ruled this land until the end of the Warring States period. In the Edo period it came under the Kasama domain and flourished as a merchant town where goods such as cotton were gathered and traded. A great fire in 1837 prompted the successive construction of fireproof, storehouse-style merchant houses. From the Meiji into the Taisho era, the town thrived on silk-thread production and the kimono-fabric trade. Its old streets still remain today, lined with more than 300 historic structures—storehouses, merchant houses, and gates. In 2010, this townscape became the first in Ibaraki Prefecture to be designated a national preservation district for historic buildings. Streets that bend at sharp angles, imposing merchant houses with black walls, dignified gates. The quiet backstreets and the weathered rows of houses revealed captivating expressions as photographic subjects. The film camera I used this time was the PENTAX LX. Rugged and resistant to dust and moisture, it has a unique mechanism that reads the light falling on the film directly during exposure. More than 40 years after its release, it remains a celebrated classic loved by many photographers. For slowly walking an old townscape while shooting, it was the perfect companion. Camera PENTAX LX (late model) Lens SMC 28–135mm F4 SMC 645 200mm F4 (used with PENTAX ADAPTER K FOR 645 LENS) SMC 50mm F1.4 Film Fujifilm 400 Location Makabe, Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki, Japan #PENTAXLX #filmcamera #filmphotography #filmisnotdead #フィルムカメラの魅力 #PENTAX #LX #LX後期 #古い町並み #日本の風景 #japantravel #CX5