Photography of Mitsubishi FUSO heritage truck collection

Where old trucks go to live another life…

I’ve been shooting various things for Fuso for a few years now. In 2021, they were the first client to come back after the initial impact of Covid. Since June of that year, we’ve done five shoots for them. This post is about the latest.

Classic trucks in deep countryside

In rural Tochigi, Fuso has its proving ground. The sum total of what happens there is a mystery to me. I’ve seen a few buildings, been in a couple. That’s about it.

In September, I was there to shoot one of Fuso’s new engines and a large part of their heritage truck collection. The majority of the heritage stuff we shot was old Canter trucks. Fuso has just this month launched their new E-Canter. Having some new shots fo the old Canters is a nice part of the ongoing PR for the new truck’s launch. Selling a new product and showing its lineage, its history. That’s a nice story and a great hook.

A little about how we approached the shoot

I took pretty much everything with me, gear wise, for this shoot. The engine shots were mostly done with the Hasselblad H4D-40, with a few closeups shot on the Nikon D800e. Those shots were lit with a couple of Elinchrom pack flashes.

The heritage trucks are kept in a large garage/warehouse. Big enough to get far enough back and shoot to get some nice background defocus. All of the series you see below was shot with with either the Hasselblad 503CW, Zeiss 80mm f/2.8 and CFV50c digital back. Or the Nikon D800e, 50mm f/1.8 AiS and 135mm f/2. The CFV rig slows me down and helps me really get into the subjects and spend time. The Nikon is for flitting around and shooting around the angle I’ve found with the Blad.

What was in the garage?

For our shoot, we had a Canter from the 1960s, two from the 1970s, one from the 80-s and a Jupiter 3ton from the late 1950s.

As for what else was in the garage.. well, a few real curios. A couple of which made it into the background or foreground of some of these shots.

  • The 2007 Fuso Eco D dump-truck concept.
  • The 2004 concept truck simply know as The FUSO.
The Gallery
Links and thanks….

A big thank you to everyone at Fuso in Kitsuregawa, for their help on the day. Thanks to Ryan in PR for all his unswerving help and support. Thanks to Joseph and everyone at the Wild Tame agency for having me on board. Thanks to Joe for assisting me on the day.