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 surreal and almost mystical lighting. Of the many castles we’ve visited in Japan over the past several years, Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond at sunset are next-level beautiful.
This was also an excellent opportunity to compare the night photography capabilities of the Samsung S24 Ultra against the Sony A6600 with the Sigma 18–50mm f2.8 lens. The S24 Ultra was able to produce very contrasty pictures that were relatively free of noise, but they also looked slightly more exaggerated than the actual scene as observed by the human eye. The A6600’s cropped sensor struggled a little as the pictures were taken at ISO 3200 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 A7III that I brought along for my Japan trips 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 of the tour, and we left the Gyeongju area at about 6:30PM. The journey back to Busan took about 1 hour 45 minutes, with stops at Seomyeon and Haeundae stations to drop off other groups of visitors.
That’s a wrap for our Day 05 activities. We’d be leaving Busan tomorrow morning and travelling to our next city: Suncheon!