Just For Grins, Going Old School... Scanning Tosogu...

[rkg]

Hi,

 

In the distant past I've played with using a scanner to "shoot" tosogu - even wrote up something on it:

 

http://rkgphotos.com//articles/scanning_final.pdf

 

Back in the day of early (read cr*p) digital cameras, it was about the only way to get a high resolution image, though it had problems (the dynamic range sucks, darks block up, color is off, reflection issues, funky perspective, etc etc etc), you could generally get an image that consistently showed most everything (even if they weren't very flattering), particularly if you didn't know jack sh*t about lighting (like me at the time :-/)

 

The trouble is that time marches on and between the decently large sensors, FAR superior dynamic range the newer cameras have, having studied light control, etc etc. Its not something I've done in a LOONG time.

 

However, somebody pinged me on the kodogu no sekai facebook page recently about using a scanner for shooting fittings, and since I don't think I'd tried it in the better part of a decade (and I'm kinda under the weather so studying was hopeless anyway), just for grins I plopped that kyo-shoami (or is it Iyo shoami? :-) ) piece I had posted earlier on the scanner and gave it a go. 

 

First off, I found that that I hadn't ever created a profile for the scanner using the particular combination of color depth and resolution I wanted to use (and if I had one it would have been dodgy anyway (since I haven't bothered to calibrate the beast since, what, 2010), and my scanner calibration software no longer functioned (gotta love windows 10 as well as companies that get bought a few times so they no longer support their products ), so I did a quick and dirty color correction by scanning a white balance card and getting the color/tint settings to apply to the images using photoshop.

 

Here's the result:  On the left is a version of the image shot with a camera, the center is the "final" scanned image, and the one on the right is the image out of the scanner.  Note that I ended up using a levels tweak to pull the dynamic range so it was actually across 5 stops, as well a little saturation adjustment.

 

I actually don't like the way scans look for a lot reasons, but as can be seen, it does let you produce a reasonably detailed image that is often better than can be gotten with a phone camera if no attention (if done without working with the lighting/care in camera placement/etc) - so... Give it a shot the next time all you can't seem to get an image that looks very good with your phone....

 

rkg

(Richard George)
 

[Brian]

Love your experiments and results Richard. You are our man when it comes to these things!
Well done, looks great.
And yes, I too have the Win 10/scanner issue.

[Vermithrax16]

I have access to a very high end imaging station at work (we use it for DNA, microscopy, and protein gels) and I will try to bring a tsuba in when I get back from vacation to try some experiments on imaging.

[Iekatsu]

I scanned one of my Tsuba today, this is the final result, I have added a photo for comparison, but the colour is pretty close.

[rkg]

Not bad :-)

 

On the color, I think the newer scanners with LEDs as the illumination source may not be all that bad out of the box.  If you color manage you'll probably see issues, but for internet postings where nobody has piece in hand to compare the color to or color manages their monitor/system... eh...

I think I tended to use the open scanner to get the black background back in the day because it saved editing (I wasn't so good at masking work back then) - plus (to me at least), the edge details fading to black looked less bad than those big black shadows you get against a white background.  In addition, if you're not tweaking the dynamic range of the image, the black background makes the object appear lighter....

Of course with those two restraints gone, even with a quick (bad) mask job you can get better results (as the edges aren't fading to black for the most part) - here's another scan I just did of a new (to me) piece scanned against a white background (to preserve the edges) and masked off (sorry for the hack job on it ).

 

I actually don't like the way the iron looks, the weird hot spots on the brass, etc, but hey.... 

 

 

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)

 

 

 

I scanned one of my Tsuba today, this is the final result, I have added a photo for comparison, but the colour is pretty close.

[Iekatsu]

Richard,

 

I was surprised that the colour came out so well, it was just a matter of setting the colour profile to match photoshop. I tested scanning with the lid open to get a black background, but there was significant "macro blocking" around the edges which would have been tricky to correct. After scanning with the lid closed there was limited cleanup to do, I only had to mask the background and adjust the levels in photoshop, thats it. I have attached an image of the original scan for reference.

 

All the best,

 

Thomas