Sapporo, Japan

For Photographers

Here's a few tips on where to shoot good photos in Sapporo and how to shoot in the snow

places to visit in sapporo

I’ll get to a few places to visit in Sapporo that are worth shooting at in a minute but first, some tips for shooting in the snow so the snow’s not blue or everything turns grey.  First, if you’re shooting digital, it’s piss easy, shoot in raw (Raw+F) on any of the Fuji X-Series cameras and just make adjustments later. This is much easier than trying to mess about with the settings in camera.

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I shot film, not in Sapporo, but it’s pretty much all I shot in Rusutsu and everything turned out fine with just one small adjustment.  Over expose by 1.5-2.5 stops. As with most photography tips and in fact any kind of advice on the Internet, most of it is given by total idiots who know nothing or next to nothing about the subject but have declared themselves “experts” because they have nothing better to do with their time than sit behind the keyboard and make 343 forum replies per day.

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If you Google “shooting film in the snow” you’ll come up with kinds of nonsense “don’t shoot slide film”, “I’d underexpose”, “don’t shoot film at all, it’s too risky”, “the cold will ruin your camera”, and just some absolute crap and downright factually incorrect advice from absolute slappers who’s lives revolve around giving unsolicited and terrible advice.  I shot 5 rolls of Provia 400X, 5 rolls of Fuji Industrial and didn’t have a single shot turn out bad.  All I had to do was set the exposure on my Nikon F3 to +2 and away I went, informed the film developing shop what I did and that’s it.

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Here’s a few places to visit in Sapporo for some good photos, more info can be found in our Information pages:

  • Downtown Sapporo – lights and snow, including Odori Park
  • Moerenuma Park – probably one of my favourite places to visit in Sapporo for photographing, especially since there’s not many people there in the winter
  • Kurayama Ski Jump Stadium – if you get lucky and can catch the ski jumpers practicing
  • Takino Suzuran Hillside National Park – beautiful in the fall

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