Street Photography in Japan: Tokyo on Portra 160
A journey through Asia, captured with a Konica POP and a single roll of Kodak Portra 160.
This trip through Asia started from Spain, with five or six film rolls packed in my backpack. I shot analog photography in Kuala Lumpur, then Tokyo, and finally Seoul. Little by little —as I feel like it— I’ll be sharing the rest of those series.
Today, we start with Tokyo.
The Camera
All the analog photos from this trip were taken with one single camera: the Konica POP. It was a risk to bring only that. I had never developed a roll shot with it before, but I thought it worked — I loaded a film, fired once, saw it advance, and trusted that was enough.
It’s a versatile little camera: compact, automatic focus (though not the best), built-in flash, and a comfortable focal length. Its limitation? It only accepts up to ISO 400. What makes it special, though, is the story behind it. It wasn’t a purchase — it was a gift from my aunt. She bought it in Italy and used it to photograph her travels across Europe. After years forgotten in a drawer, I brought it back to life.
Shooting Film on the Road
Film photography on a long trip isn’t easy. I carried only a few rolls — the price of film is sky-high, and developing it isn’t any better. Plus, I had to optimize space and weight; everything mattered on such a long journey. This particular roll was a Kodak Portra 160. When I finally received the developed negatives, it blew my mind. There was something special about those images.
The Result
All of these shots are street photography — spontaneous, intuitive, taken while simply walking around Tokyo. During the trip, I also used two digital cameras (a Fujifilm X100V and a Sony A7 IV), which were my main tools for most work. But the analog results… are something else.
With each shot, there was always something at stake: money, time, the risk of losing a roll or having it burned by an airport scanner. You didn’t know what you had until weeks —sometimes months— later, if you were lucky.
I took thousands of digital photos. But these… these are different. Many aren’t technically great — some are blurry, others poorly framed or flawed. But that doesn’t matter. Beyond aesthetics, these images hold the memory of the trip — the feeling. And for me, that’s enough.