Our fifth stop in our guided tour of Gyeongju was Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond. The visit to the palace grounds was at sunset – which I think was very intentional as the illumination lights come on and paint the palace and grounds in a surreal and almost mystical lighting. Of the many castles we’ve visited in Japan these several years, Donggung Palace and Wolfji Pond at sunset is next level beautiful. This was an excellent opportunity to compare the night phototaking capabilities of the Samsung S24 Ultra against the Sony A6600 and Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens. The S24 Ultra was able to produce very contrasty pictures that were relatively free of noise, but also looked slightly more exaggerated than the actual scene as observed by the human eye. The A6600’s cropped sensor suffered a little as the pictures were at ISO3200 and above, but I was able to retrieve a good degree of shadow detail – though not quite at the same level as the full-frame A73 that I brought along for my Japan trips from a few years back.
Pictures from our visit:
We stayed at the Palace area for about 45 minutes, then looped back to Woljeong Bridge for its evening pictures. The latter was the last stop for the tour, and we left the Gyeongju area at about 6:30PM. The journey back to Busan for us took 1 hr 45 minutes, with stops at Seomyong and Haeundae stations to drop off groups of other visitors.
That’s a wrap for our Day 05 activities. We’d be leaving Busan tomorrow morning and traveling to our next city: Suncheon!