I am sooooo cheap! Where can I get a cheap flight to L.A.?

[AlbertSiegel]

I am looking for the most god damned cheapest flight to L.A.... I only need to get there. So far, I have found a ticket for 35,000YEN plus nearly the same in taxes. I want to find a flight for 45,000YEN including taxes or less. Anyone have any good places to look?

[Taro Toporific]

... So far, I have found a ticket for 35,000YEN plus nearly the same in taxes. I want to find a flight for 45,000YEN including taxes or less. Anyone have any good places to look?

Japanese websites seem to be total crap for finding cheap tickets.

I need an open RT ticket for Tokyo-to-WestCoast-to-Tokyo in anytime mid to late May. Has anybody heard of any 24-hours-notice, standby tickets offer in Japan like the super cheap ones offered in the States?

[Kuang_Grade]

American Airlines is running a fare sale in the US for the next few days...it looks like the sale may also work for Japan/US/Japan trips. AA's website can be quirky to use at times...when you search by fare, it often shows low fares that when you actually try to book them, they say there is an error...but through trial and error searching by time, you can usually find the deal eventually

http://www.aa.com/apps/netSAAver/ViewNetSAAverFareSalesDetail.jhtml?anchorLocation=index.jhtml&repositoryId=14701219&repositoryName=FareToolSpecialContentRepository&saleId=1587

American Airlines is offering special sale fares for travel from cities in the continental U.S. to Tokyo or Osaka, Japan. Purchase your tickets on AA.com by March 31, 2006 and save when you travel outbound April 1 through May 18, 2006. Return travel must be complete by June 17, 2006

Orbitz in the US is also showing fares for 5/8 to 5/18 NRT/LAX/NRT ranging between $750 and $850 on multiple carriers....although there might be a ton of restrictions...some of the airlines have started "you are on the plane or you are out your money" type fares, which is a bit harsh when you are booking 40 days in advance.

[Charles]

Has anybody heard of any 24-hours-notice, standby tickets offer in Japan like the super cheap ones offered in the States?

Standby tix are ancient history, at least over here in the States. Standby seats are almost never available, not since the airlines all went broke, now they try to max out every flight even at the risk of constant overbooking. My sister used to work for AA until just recently, one of the reasons she quit was because her unlimited free standby tickets became useless (she flew a lot so that was a loss of a major perk). And if the employees can't get standby tickets (they have top priority) what chance do you have?

Some of my friends used to fly Air Courier seats. It is really cheap, but you can only have 1 carry-on bag, as they use your baggage allocation for their courier parcels. I don't know if it's around anymore, but if you try this scheme, you're more adventurous than I am (and you travel lighter).

[FG Lurker]

I use Academy Travel for every ticket I buy. I used to call a selection of places trying to find the absolute best price but these days I never bother. You might find a ticket 500yen or 1000yen cheaper somewhere else, but generally Ray (owner of Academy) gives great ticket prices AND he finds tickets that other places will say don't exist or aren't possible. He's being selling tickets here for over 20 years and knows the business amazingly well.

So, my suggestion is to call Academy Travel and ask for Ray. You can tell him Ian told you to call, but I'm pretty sure he gives the same great service to everyone. 06-6303-3538. You can also send him an email, he answers either the same day or the next day. (his first name)@academytravel.jp

[drpepper]

I use Academy Travel for every ticket I buy. I used to call a selection of places trying to find the absolute best price but these days I never bother. You might find a ticket 500yen or 1000yen cheaper somewhere else, but generally Ray (owner of Academy) gives great ticket prices AND he finds tickets that other places will say don't exist or aren't possible. He's being selling tickets here for over 20 years and knows the business amazingly well.

So, my suggestion is to call Academy Travel and ask for Ray. You can tell him Ian told you to call, but I'm pretty sure he gives the same great service to everyone. 06-6303-3538. You can also send him an email, he answers either the same day or the next day. (his first name)@academytravel.jp

I can vouch for Ray as well.. I buy from him on a regular basis.. my last trip a month ago I did quick phone call round up places and then called Ray. True to form he matched their prices. Truly a good guy.

Lurker: you didn't happen to go to the Yodogawa fireworks party that Ray throws last year did you? If so we may have met there!

[FG Lurker]

Lurker: you didn't happen to go to the Yodogawa fireworks party that Ray throws last year did you? If so we may have met there!

Yep, I was there! He definitely gets things well set up and in a good location. Always a good show! I took some photos of them last year, and the year before actually as well. So I was (one of?) the guy(s) there with a tripod set up.

[mr. sparkle]

oops...

[mr. sparkle]

Some of my friends used to fly Air Courier seats. It is really cheap, but you can only have 1 carry-on bag, as they use your baggage allocation for their courier parcels. I don't know if it's around anymore, but if you try this scheme, you're more adventurous than I am (and you travel lighter).

I've done it. It's a very cheap way to travel.
More info here: http://www.courier.org/

[drpepper]

Yep, I was there! He definitely gets things well set up and in a good location. Always a good show! I took some photos of them last year, and the year before actually as well. So I was (one of?) the guy(s) there with a tripod set up.

Well.. there was a guy in front of me, had a Canon and another guy to my right.. I was there with the wifey and no camera. If you saw me I look like Jesus, 6' with long hair and a beard... But then again the guy in front of me was telling me he shoots at 1600 with the canon and gets almost no noise which is crazy unless you down sample by a factor of at least 2.... was that you? I still don't buy shooting at 1600 with a noisy cmos... but that is another story.

[FG Lurker]

Well.. there was a guy in front of me, had a Canon and another guy to my right.. I was there with the wifey and no camera. If you saw me I look like Jesus, 6' with long hair and a beard... But then again the guy in front of me was telling me he shoots at 1600 with the canon and gets almost no noise which is crazy unless you down sample by a factor of at least 2.... was that you? I still don't buy shooting at 1600 with a noisy cmos... but that is another story.

Yes, that was me, but that isn't quite what I would have said. There is noise in 20D images at ISO1600, but as long as the photograph is properly exposed the noise is very well controlled. I likely said something along the lines of I can get low-noise photos at ISO1600 from the 20D. To a D100 user that would seem nearly impossible though, I am sure. I had a D60 (same era as your D100) before the 20D and the improvement was tremendous at ISO400 and higher.

I have a D70 as well, and that produces very clean images up to ISO800. Not quite as good as the 20D, but still very good. Excellent considering how cheap D70 bodies are. Things have come a long way since your D100 (and my D60) was released in 2002.

I remember you saying that you had a friend who had to use some sort of very special film to get [color="White"]redacted photo [/color]:ninja2: fireworks photos though.

[drpepper]

[quote="FG Lurker"]Yes, that was me, but that isn't quite what I would have said. There is noise in 20D images at ISO1600, but as long as the photograph is properly exposed the noise is very well controlled. I likely said something along the lines of I can get low-noise photos at ISO1600 from the 20D. To a D100 user that would seem nearly impossible though, I am sure. I had a D60 (same era as your D100) before the 20D and the improvement was tremendous at ISO400 and higher.

I have a D70 as well, and that produces very clean images up to ISO800. Not quite as good as the 20D, but still very good. Excellent considering how cheap D70 bodies are. Things have come a long way since your D100 (and my D60) was released in 2002.

I remember you saying that you had a friend who had to use some sort of very special film to get [color="White"]redacted photo [/color]:ninja2: fireworks photos though. ]

Well they are gonna look nice on screen at low resolution but CMOS produce more noise than CCD so for me in design when I output at high resolution you can see the difference.

Also those pictures are pretty but are exactly what I thought they would be. At those exposure times everything is bled through you don't get the little spots or nothing.. alot of them don't even look like fireworks as the light has become lines. I am sure the guy I talked to (don't remember the specifics really since I have never really looked into that kind of photography) was capturing in much much shorter exporsure times and something close to how we see it. Your pics are nice and look very cool but they look nothing like how my eye sees the fireworks.

I don't know if this is a good example or not but you can see in this pic the smaller glowing dodads and smoke etc and looks closer to how we see them. I think that doing this may be a bit harder....

[FG Lurker]

Well they are gonna look nice on screen at low resolution but CMOS produce more noise than CCD so for me in design when I output at high resolution you can see the difference.

In the past this was true. Those old CMOS webcams, cheap CMOS-based scanners... They were all horrible, and the earliest CMOS digital camera sensors were also very poor. Things have changed (as they usually do in the world of high-tech), and when the 20D came out it was the lowest noise DSLR on the market by quite a margin. Now Canon's 1D Mark IIn and 1Ds Mark II have lower noise at their highest ISOs, but the 20D is not that far behind. They are both CMOS anyway... Yes, Canon's 16mp full-frame body is CMOS based, as is their 8.5fps pro body aimed at sports/wildlife photographers.

Also those pictures are pretty but are exactly what I thought they would be. At those exposure times everything is bled through you don't get the little spots or nothing.. alot of them don't even look like fireworks as the light has become lines. [...] Your pics are nice and look very cool but they look nothing like how my eye sees the fireworks.

This confuses me... I see fireworks in exactly the same way that they came out on the photo page I linked to.

I am sure the guy I talked to (don't remember the specifics really since I have never really looked into that kind of photography) was capturing in much much shorter exporsure times and something close to how we see it.

I don't know if this is a good example or not but you can see in this pic the smaller glowing dodads and smoke etc and looks closer to how we see them. I think that doing this may be a bit harder....

I did take some photos that look very much like what you linked to but they don't have the vibrancy or attractiveness of real fireworks. I've never seen photos like that used in marketing though, they aren't very purdy -- or particularly accurate.

[drpepper]

This confuses me... I see fireworks in exactly the same way that they came out on the photo page I linked to.


I did take some photos that look very much like what you linked to but they don't have the vibrancy or attractiveness of real fireworks. I've never seen photos like that used in marketing though, they aren't very purdy -- or particularly accurate.

Well your eyes may be messed up

Those second set are much better, they look closer to the real thing

If you are going for effect I can how you may like the first set but I am more of a realist. One of these days and will have to give it a shot myself.

Oh and BTW the new Nikon uses a CMOS as well but I have not seen alot of low light comparisons with the D200 yet...