I love how the idea of Japanese conscientiousness has become almost a meme for how we wish companies were run. Other examples you've probably seen come across the webs:
To be honest, a train leaving early SUCKS. You show up on time, and you find out you missed it. Maybe the next one is in 40 minutes, maybe it's the next day.
(I realize 20 seconds early isn't that bad, but still, leaving early by any amount of time is a lot worse than leaving late)
In this case, it's annoying because you'll have missed a semi-rapid and the next comparable train to Tsukuba will leave 9 minutes later and arrive 17 minutes later.
It's not a 40 minute thing, this isn't Caltrain, but it's still annoying.
I loved (not really) how sometimes on Caltrain, if the trains were delayed, you could get on a delayed train after you had planned to travel, and get home sooner than if the trains had been running on time.
The same often happened when I travelled by train in Ontario (Canada) where the trains shared the line with freight service, and so sometimes a train was poorly timed such that it always had to wait for freight to clear first. In those cases, if a train was delayed, the delay occurred at the station such that by the time the train left the station, the freight had already cleared and the time spent on the train was less than it normally would be. Also, delays often meant the train had fewer passengers, so it would stop for less time at each stop... am I on the right track? ;-)
The freight reason is not it. If the freight got out of the way at the same time it normally would, you would decrease your travel time, but arrive at your destination no earlier than a normal arrival.
The second reason is closer, but not exact. Caltrain has a variety of different types of trains, some stop at all the stops, some stop at only a few. Here's the scenario: there is a fast train then a slow train. Your normal schedule doesn't allow you to get to the station on time to take the fast train, so you normally take the slow train. If both trains are behind schedule, you might be able to make it to the fast train, and since it goes faster you might get to your destination earlier than normal.
The frustrating thing of course, is that even if the trains are severely delayed, they have (or had, depending on whether they go out of business soon) a policy of running the exact schedule for each train as if normal. So even if all the trains are piled up, delayed, they would make local stops, etc. even though everyone wanted just to get to the end by express.
Sad that this kind of issue was so common (1x per month at least) that I blame them for not having efficient accident backup plans.
Yes, yes, I realize that there's the problem of having trains go express when they're all stacked up.
I once changed trains to take an express (skipping stops), realized I’d left my laptop on the first train, got off at the next express stop and waited for the slowpoke, and got my laptop!
could make different stops. Not stop as many times. I had to watch out for that when riding the commuter rail in boston. Make sure to get on the right train, or you won't get your stop
Why don't they just build out BART between Millbrae and Santa Clara? Once the Silicon Valley Extension is finished, BART will be almost a loop around the Bay except for that gap.
One reason that extending BART down the peninsula is a non-starter is the political power of the owners of hundreds of properties that you’d have to eminent-domain and knock down.
Plus the fact that the citizens (through their representatives) voted against it decades ago, so it was removed from the original plan. Given the current fuss among the citizenry over similar problems with running the nascent high-speed rail up the Caltrain corridor, I’d guess a vote today on BART would have the same outcome.
> One reason that extending BART down the peninsula is a non-starter is the political power of the owners of hundreds of properties that you’d have to eminent-domain and knock down.
Couldn't they build a tunnel? With a tunnel, the requirements for eminent domain would be relatively limited (portals, station entrances, maybe some ventilation/utility buildings)
Sydney, Australia's new metro system which is being built relies mostly on tunnels (plus some conversion of existing surface lines, and elevated rail in outer suburban areas where land is relatively cheap). Sydney's metro area (5.2 million) isn't hugely larger than the Bay Area's (4.7 million).
Tunneling in the US is massively expensive, which is a huge problem for infrastructure projects. There have been some previous posts on exactly this topic ("why do projects in the US cost so much?").
And we are out of money / unwilling to pay for such projects. Australia is still relatively swimming in its natural resource boom and has funds to do that. And political willingness to invest in public transportation that's clean and efficient.
In California, public transport seems to be relegated to the status of a homeless mobility system / shelter, that most people reluctantly take and have to wonder why it's so badly operated. I don't think the idea will get far to tunnel under the rest of the peninsula. We can't even sort out the remaining 1 mile of Caltrain that was planned to connect to downtown SF and the Transbay center.
Aside from that, I believe there's a groundwater level problem under most of the places where such a line would go? I'm not an expert on that though.
> And we are out of money / unwilling to pay for such projects. Australia is still relatively swimming in its natural resource boom and has funds to do that.
On a per capita basis, the US is richer than Australia. According to 2019 IMF estimates, US's nominal GDP per capita is US$65,111 (ranked 7th), Australia's nominal GDP per capita is only US$53,825 (ranked 10th) [1]. Similarly, the US's PPP GDP per capita (2020 IMF estimates) is US$67,426 (ranked 10th), while Australia's is only US$54,799 (ranked 19th) [2].
The US is a richer country than Australia in both relative (per capita GDP) and absolute (overall GDP) terms (and both nominally and at PPP). If Australia can afford tunnels, why can't a richer country like the US afford them too? (Especially in the Bay Area Peninsula, which is one of the wealthiest areas in the whole of the US.)
But the important other factor is government debt.
Australia's national debt is less than 1/2 of the US's in terms of % of GDP. (US has basically 100% of its annual GDP in debt). Australia has a lot more room to consider big projects as a result.
I think a lot of people have an excessive fear of government debt, especially given how low interest rates are nowadays. Countries (including the US) should be borrowing more to stimulate their COVID-afflicted economies.
Putting that aside, a common trick used in countries like Australia and the UK is to keep big projects off the government's balance sheet through public-private partnerships – private corporations do most of the borrowing, not the government, and end up owning the infrastructure (often under some deal where it reverts to government ownership in 50 or 100 years time). But I get the impression that approach is far less common in the US. (Despite the fact that it is the more capitalist/free-market approach – allow private investors to own public infrastructure – and the US is generally thought of as a more capitalist/free-market country than the UK or Australia are.)
Public-private partnerships are often criticised as being inferior to government borrowing, due to higher private sector borrowing costs, and I agree with that criticism. But, even though I think it is best to build with government borrowing, if one has a government debt allergy preventing that, then building with private borrowing seems better than not building at all.
It's not about the apology, I think. It's about the fact that in order to issue am apology, the thing you are apologizing for must be out of the ordinary.
Call Trans could issue an apology and it wouldn't help. Because they would just have a daily apology log filled to the brim.
> I have a company where everyone has a phone that used the same calender program, same service, same type of phone, etc. At 8:50 and again at 9:00 every phone will ding to announce 9:00 meeting. There is no 0.01 second syncing of the phones. The time might be exactly the same but the "dings" happens over 30 seconds. Then one phone might be a good minute or more off. (usually mine) There are many times where the dings are within 5 seconds.
I think this is why trains and airplanes tend to be delayed so much. It is much better to be late than to leave early. A train that's late will usually still eventually arrive.
NRT... ugh, flights so stacked going in that a plane failing to clear the runway fast enough resulted in us having to go-around and re-enter the deep approach queue. A nice 30 minutes added to an already 12 hour flight...
Yeah, or you land and see the dreaded bus awaiting which means an extra 30 minutes to arrive at the airport itself. Or worse, you're departing and get through security and walk for ages to get to your gate, go through another security thing without thinking, and then realize
a) you're in some weird bus terminal and 60 minutes before the flight the bus is starting to board to take passengers to the plane which is not close
b) you're a 15 minute walk and 15 minutes security line away from that cluster of restaurants you decided not to stop at
My father has been working in public transportation for nearly 30 years, the only official complaint he ever received was for leaving 3 minutes early (good old times of analog wrist watches)
A lot of the apologies are "automatic" in Japan. As in, they dont even think on how to improve their processes and instead will default to a an apology instead.
Yes, I realize of course there's the practical/real side of this story, and there's also opinionated discontent with various Nikon/Canon updates in the past. Just this week there was some story about a Canon overheating issue where people were talking about the refreshing change of how they addressed it quickly (or something to that effect).
The big one I can recall was the Nikon 600 "dust" issue, I think IIRC it was because there was too much lubricant on the mechanism that splashed onto the sensor. In a film camera it wouldn't matter because any spots of oil would just be advanced with the film.
They were late, but they did the right thing, eventually.
Sure but only because companies are such sticklers about not taking a minute of their time from your work (which is also evidenced by people staying late, often doing pretend work way after hours because the boss is chatting away and hasn’t left the office.
It looks nice but the reasons for its existence isn’t nice.
We have that in France as well, I assumed it was common everywhere. Otherwise how do you justify yourself to your employer/school/whatever if you're late because your commute took one hour more than usual because of something completely out of your control?
When I worked in midtown Manhattan, NYC I could show up basically whenever as a salaried engineer, but the administrative staff of our office were paid hourly and scheduled to show up at a certain time. They also all lived further out with more transfers so more chances of delay on the subway. The answer from their boss was "plan that into your commute" even though the variance could be 40 minutes for a real delay. Perverse!
Does someone actually care enough to check the slip? The few times I've been late due to things like this (flat bike tire, crazy traffic, train delay, whatever) my boss was just like ...ok try not to let it happen again and possibly documented it somewhere. I have been salaried for the most part, maybe if you're hourly you might get docked the time.
When I have had someone under me and they're late once in a while I don't really care.
(USA)
In schools with minors there may be liability reasons. I used to have a somewhat unreliable commute, so my school was exempted from being legally responsible for my wellbeing for a few minutes after what would have been normal.
That's because your employer is usually an ass who needs you to come sharply on time (Flex work is still an alien concept in most Japanese companies) so you need an actual note to justify it was not your lazy ass' fault.
Nikon still sells the Nikon F6 film camera. All existing stock was probably manufactured a loooong time ago, but it is still technically a current product, so I imagine they’re obligated to provide support and government-mandated environmental fixes.
I still occasionally use a now over 40 years old Nikon FE that, despite having never been serviced as far as I can tell, still works flawlessly. It even does some things better than even the most modern DSLRs, it can, for example automatically expose exposures several minutes long correctly (far outside spec, but works). Impeccable quality. The old Ai-S lenses, too, entirely made from glass, brass, aluminium and some steel with a touch of cement, it pleases the gods. Zeiss still makes them like they used to.
Which is why I’m always surprised the F6, to borrow a phrase from Apple, “remains a product in our lineup”.
There’s so many used and seemingly indestructible film cameras floating around. I guess there’s some market for a factory-warranty film SLR, but I’m not sure what said market is. If I was going to shoot film, I’d find a Nikon F5, which would also double as a medieval flail for self-defense.
The F6 is the most advanced and capable film DSLR ever built. If you want/need to shoot film and you shoot subjects that are commonly done with modern digital SLRs and considered out of reach of a film camera, the F6 is the best game in town. The fastest and lowest-light-capable autofocus, the best matrix metering, digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!), etc. It is a modern pro camera that happens to shoot film.
Most people don’t need it but it’s certainly unique. If you do need it, there is no substitute.
Nikon actually has a history of doing that as well. The Nikonos series underwater cameras were really the only thing in their class, with unique water-contact optics that avoided rainbow diffraction from the port by putting the optics right against the water. They also made unique 180-degree orthographic lenses for atmospheric surveying - measure cloud cover/etc by photographing the sky every day and get the full horizon to horizon in one frame. etc etc. They really are a fascinating company.
Check out the 1001 Nights of Nikkor, a fascinating series of stories about all that stuff.
Some films are really high resolution. Sure, the process is a lot more involved, but you could end up with images sporting the same resolution as today's top end full-frame cameras.
Today's top-end full frame cameras have better resolution than 35mm film. Even with 4000 dpi drum scans it's hard to go much beyond like 25 megapixels of effective resolution. You can easily get 50 mp full frame digital nowadays - although the lenses to drive that are another problem.
Medium and large format can get more because it's more film area, albeit not as much as you think in practice. It takes specific equipment and good technique, and often you are limited by the shallower depth of field or diffraction. IMO however it is much easier to achieve "reasonable" results comparable with modern full frame digital on MF/LF, because you don't need everything to be insanely high-resolution and perfectly aligned, the larger film area means that you can get good resolution out of "basic" equipment that is doing 2000-3000 dpi compared to the 4000 dpi of a drum scan that is necessary to max out 35mm.
Film also has very different technical characteristics from digital. It has an exponential "shoulder" to the exposure curve that tends to make it resistant to over-exposure, where with digital if it's overexposed it's just gone, clipped to white. It also has very different aesthetics, it just looks different (because each film stock has different exposure characteristics).
Also, some film stocks have unique frequency response curves - the astrophotography community is mourning the loss of Technical Pan film because it was perfect for photographing the hydrogen-alpha emissions of stars. It turns out that this film was developed for the National Reconnaissance Office for satellite surveillance and since they've moved to digital it's no longer being produced.
Yeah. I could get higher resolution out of 8×10 sheet film. If I have it perfectly flat. And if I nail my focus and have everything aligned properly. And if I get it into a scanner properly. A good scanner. That somehow doesn't get dust on it.
Or I can use live view on a 35mm digital camera and nail the focus and exposure exactly. Or if I’m really getting paid, I get a Fuji GFX 100, a 102MP medium-format camera, and get a ludicrous number of pixels.
It has an internal memory bank and you dump it to a compactflash card with the MV-1 accessory that the other person mentioned.
Personally I think that's a little clunky and it would be better to go with a little transflash card, but the F6 was designed in 2004 and I guess at that point it would have been a SD card and maybe even compactflash and they didn't want the size.
This approach is probably still preferable to direct USB connection though, because presumably that would require utility software that would now be incredibly out of date and tied to like Windows XP or something. If nobody bothered to write an open-source utility then that function would be unusable for modern PCs.
That's a problem on some hardware, I have a scanner where the only software that supports it is tied to Windows XP, or you can use third-party software (VueScan)_that talks to it directly and bypasses the official drivers. It is a scanner designed to do 4x5 film directly (not a flatbed) so replacements are thousands of dollars.
There's also more demand for largely manual cameras.
The F6 was the flagship 35mm SLR camera once production of new film cameras stopped at Nikon, and as such it's filled with all the features you'd expect of a flagship camera. It'll take a battery grip, it shoots at 8FPS with it, it'll take a separate data recorder to record exposure info, etc. etc.
Except that a lot of people using film today don't want that. The manual old-time simplicity and thoughtfulness is part of the selling point for a lot of those who still use film, and if they wanted to shoot at 8FPS or higher, DSLRs and mirrorless cameras are far better choices on any technical merit. I'd be surprised if the F6 ends up selling out easily.
> There’s so many used and seemingly indestructible film cameras floating around. I guess there’s some market for a factory-warranty film SLR, but I’m not sure what said market is. If I was going to shoot film, I’d find a Nikon F5, which would also double as a medieval flail for self-defense.
I heard a couple of years back that Japanese police bought F6s for evidence photography.
There is also a market of camera users who just want the "best", newest thing, with the most features. Look at the difference in prices between the Nikon FE or FM and FM3A, when they are barely different for a photographer with even modest skills
Optical cement. Traditionally, Canadian Balsam would have been used, but there are newer adhesives that are apparently easier. I bet UV cured is a lot more practical in a production setting. See this article about using balsam to repair a doublet:
"Taking a look at the serial number of my camera which is 35955 and comparing it to an F6 sold new in 2015 bearing the number 34875 I’d conclude that least 1080 units have been sold since then (approximately 270 cameras per year)."
"In fact, only 152 units are impacted… so few that Nikon actually lists every affected serial number in the recall notice:
There have been consistent rumors that Fujifilm stopped making most or all of their films around 2005 and have been selling old stock since then. I wouldn't be surprised if the same held true for Nikon F6
Others have mentioned the estimate of 270 derived from serial numbering. Nikon have also said very specifically in this case that they are recalling 152 pieces sold since last July. That will likely be artificially depressed by the covid situation.
I would guess on the order of 1000 globally per year, with a lot of those being in Japan. Japan fucking loves film. Maybe a hundred or two hundred in the US.
Maybe 100 on the low end.
edit: from a sister comment the number is approximately 270 per year globally.
What really impresses here is their ability to document the recall to the point that a product that old still has its full history available, allowing them to work out which specific cameras to recall.
I've never worked in a context that made complex physical goods. Is it surprising to others that they even know which specific 152 cameras were over-plasticized?
Given that the list of serial numbers are non-consecutive (and one of them in a run of consecutive numbers went to a vendor in Austria per the article linked elsewhere in the comments), perhaps they're only recalling the ones that went to Europe where the regulation is in place?
Nikon and Canon's pro SLR ranges are product ecosystems with massive switching costs. They maintain all sorts of products and services that don't make economic sense in isolation, but are necessary to maintain a comprehensive product ecosystem. A professional or serious amateur might own tens of thousands of dollars worth of camera bodies, lenses and accessories; for a small but meaningful proportion of those customers, the continued availability of the F6 will be the key factor in their choice of camera system.
And some of the more complicated or precision components (shutter, mirror, viewfinder screen + prism, lens mount, autofocus motor, autofocus and autoexposure sensors) exist in similar forms on newer products and may be able to share production lines to some extent.
I found out about that issue the hard way last week. Pictures started coming out too dark, and searching online quickly revealed that it's a well-known issue and that a class action lawsuit was filed back in May. Repairing it was pretty straightforward, but sourcing a replacement part from before production moved from Japan to China was unpleasantly expensive.
-- Hotel apologizes in advance for a brief 1 minute planned disruption of in-room internet at 4am https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+hotel+internet+apol...
-- Japanese train company issues apology for train leaving 20 seconds early https://www.google.com/search?q=tokyo+rail+apologizes+train+...