rkg

+1 on this. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hoanh, My bad too on this - I thought the XTi had live view as well. FWIW, if you plan on doing much of this kind of shooting, its worth every penny to buy a newer body that has this capability - If you don't want to spring for a new camera, people are practically giving old XSi bodies away. Best, rkg

Hoanh, IMHO, the 10-22 is waaay too wide for doing much of any kind of macro work, and I'd posit its not good for overalls either as you'll get some kind of odd looking shots just because of the perspective distortion - if you think about it, the normal field of view for humans is around 30-35mm on a cropped camera like you've got - that distortion is fine for lanscapes/arty stuff - fittings, not so much. In addition, the copies of the 10-22 I played with had big issues with chromatic aberrations - this is bad because while software isn't too bad at taking it off reasonably well defined edges, with a sword you've got high contrast things going on everywhere, and most software that removes CA just makes a mess of it... It was also susceptible to flare. I can't say they are all this bad - it might have been a unit-to-unit issue (I've ranted before about testing EVERY lens you buy - I find a considerable number of new lenses are screwed up in some way, but that's another story) - I sent them all back and lived without one. In addition. with a wide lens like that, You've also got an issue with working distance - to fill up the frame with a tosogu piece you'd have to get really really close with a wide lens, and while you -could- put in a bunch of extension tubes to do this, I wouldn't recommend it... Even wiith a cropped camera I probably wouldn't go shorter than 50mm. back when I was using a cropped camera for shooting tosogu, I used 100 and 180mm macro lenses a lot, with the odd 50mm macro used to shoot koshirae, etc. Where do you want to go with this? Were you getting shots you were happy with using the 17-85 and a macro filter (so a roughly equivalent replacement would be fine), go down the dark path of trying to get the perfect tosogu image, or...? Is this camera going to be dedicated to just shooting tosogu, or do you need it to go out and shoot the wife/kids,landscapes, etc? What focal lengths do you normally shoot at for your general purpose stuff (its often enlightening to see what ranges you shoot in)? If you want to try a macro, you could locate a used tamron 90mm or sigma 105mm macro or maybe just go to the camera store and put the Canon ef-s 60mm macro on your camera and see if you can live with it (It would be too close for me even on a cropped camera, but ymmv...). I'd avoid the sigma 50mm macro (they have issues in the corners), but other than that, its really hard to find a bad macro lens (condition issues aside). If you want to go the all-in-one route zoom/macro filter route, you -can- get some really good images, but it usually involves starting out with a good lens. I have not done much testing on lenses specifically for cropped cameras, so I really don't have a great recommendation for these, other than to suggest that if you were happy with the 17-85 you might try picking up an ef-s 55-200 and try that with a close-up filter - it might be good enough for you, and they can be had cheep. Of course, the best lens in the world doesn't mean much if you aren't lighting/imaging the piece correctly (that's where the magic is), but that's also a different issue. I see scanning was also brought up - that may be good enough for your purposes as well. On your focusing problem - I used to fight with that all the time until I got a live view capable camera - its a LOT easier to focus using the camera tethered to a tablet or a computer.You really should do this - put the camera on a tripod, and just manually focus to place the focus point exactly where you need it. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George) EDIT: I neglected to mention the canon 100mm macro because it sounded like this was a cost sensitive application for you - you can usually find the other two ~100mm macros cheaper. I have a cannon 100mm macro and its great, though I don't use it much anymore...

Auction ended, now this piece is back up again at a lower starting price: http://www.ebay.com/itm/351092069516?ss ... 1423.l2648 rkg

I guess you pays your money and you takeses your chances. Too bad the poster chose to not upload larger images, so its kind of hard to evaluate the workmanship and the fine points of the mei. I guess you can try and compare it to the various mei in Slough, or I've got an image of mine up: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... site_1.jpg I'm not sure we're supposed to comment on active auctions, so I probably should shut up now. Best, rkg (Richard George)

and here's another image of an early tsuka Best, rkg (Richard George)

The horse is probably out of the barn on this, but in case you guys haven't heard, apparently ebay was hacked in March sometime but they only announced it this morning(!!!) http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebay-says ... 45578.html Not sure there is much you can do but change your passwords and maybe watch your credit cards, but.... Just thought I should point this out. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Ben, Welcome to the forum. In addition to getting some books, I'd highly recommend you find a way to look at a number of good tsuba IN HAND, preferably with somebody to tell you what you're looking at. At least in the states, most collectors don't mind the occasional get-together to study pieces, and if you're lucky there will be a study group somewhere nearby you can attend. the money spent to study before buying is worth it.... FWIW, buying on ebay can be a crapshoot even when you know what you are looking at - between the often poor images, ebay's fuzzification of submitted images that might have been good, dealers who deliberately obfuscate problems/condition issues with creative imaging/descriptions, and the rarity of pieces that are actually worth bidding on/are not stupidly priced beyond their worth looking for a bunny, there's just not much joy to be found there (especially of late). you might want to lay off for a while until you've studied some more. Best, rkg (Richard George)

I'd use the 100 macro, as its the sharpest of the bunch/will give you the most working distance/has the fewest ca issues/is the most flare resistant of the bunch, but that might challenge your tripod setup for getting far enough away from the piece. Again, one cause of blurriness can be out of spec lenses - this kind of work (high contrast reflective item, shooting backlit, etc) is really a torture test for lenses and can make problems really stick out... On the sharpness, you can also double check to see where the lens theoretically is the sharpest - at least with the 5Dii you don't have to be trading this off vs. diffraction effects. slr gear is also not too bad a place to look for mtf graphs: http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/index.php On the tripod rig, that is going to be a bouncy setup - yeah, you need to use the mirror lockup, and wait long enough for that system to "calm down" before tripping the shutter. you can also add some weight/damping to the system - you can try a shot bag (find one of the skinny empty sandbags and add what, 2Kg or so of lead shot) or a Matthews boa (or two) wrapped around the tripod's spider for a start. +1 on the multiple of ISO. These barely have enough dynamic range for this work to begin with, especially after you dial out canon's sensor "optimization", but that's another wall you can run into after you've gone down the dark path of color management... :-) Elements/the various incarnations of CS have kind of steep learning curve, since there are (usually) several different ways to do anything in them. It used to be Elements was missing a couple of things, but I haven't looked at it in years so I don't know if Adobe ever addressed that or not. Lightroom is great for capture/organizing, but there's stuff you can't do to images in it that you sometimes need to for these. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

There isn't a close-up to pixel peep to see what the blurriness looks like, so YMMV on the following; First, if you think the image is fuzzy you might first verify your lens is actually sharp at that f/stop (I find I have to send about every other new lens I buy back because of significant decentering errors and other resolution issues - its often like night and day after the repair depot tweaks it up and returns it or you do the same shot with a different copy of the lens) - if in doubt shoot a test target and see what you get (I now test every lens I buy immediately). You might also check your camera's sharpening parameters/ what you're doing in post (I know, dumb observation, but "always be sure"). Depending on how much you've zoomed in,how orthogonal everything is, and how much stuff is hopping around, f/5 may not yield enough "sharp" depth of field for you on this. You want to be shooting tethered (wired or wirelessly), and use mirror lockup - its arguable that you may not need lockup with flash, especially if you're using a speedlight or a studio flash with a decent t .1 (or obviously w/o flash and a high shutter speed), but it is one less thing hopping around, and I always believe in removing error sources whenever possible, so... Wobbly tripods/setups/something going "bump" always cause problems (rant about cheap tripods/heads/working near things that rattle the studio deleted), but w/o an image of your rig or a description of what you're doing/where you're shooting its hard to provide any helpful hints on reducing/damping vibrations (there are many possible sources/solutions). The autofocus will often randomly change what it focuses on if you're doing repeated shots, so taking control of the focus (either using the control software or throwing the lens into manual mode) often works best - and when you shoot tethered or wirelessly hooked to your tablet, you can zoom in on the screen and put the focus exactly where you want it - its really handy to have a big display for this. Ditto the exposure/white balance - the camera usually messes the exposure up left to its own devices (often even with a spot meter - you're shooting a reflective surfaces which causes all kinds of opportunities for problems), so I pretty much always use a gray target to set the exposure. Setting the white balance (or being prepared to do that in post) is also kind of mandatory if you want to get the colors close. EDIT: On the lighting, that's the hard part - its a matter of taste + how the piece wants to be shot for lack of a better description - it never ceases to amaze me how they are individuals. To make them look their best you pretty much have to set the lighting based on the strengths/weaknesses of each piece - and very often pieces you think could be shot under the same setup really can't (well, you can, its just some of the pieces may well not look so great...). Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, I need to make up a tsuba box, and while I think (IMHO) I've got how to construct a liner down, I haven't a clue about how to make a good looking pillow - has anybody ever posted, written up an article, etc. on how to do the pillows? Thanks, rkg (Richard George)

Nathan, What kind of scanner were you using? It looks like you might want to do something funky to get the mei to show up better (rotate the blade 45 degrees on the scanner, tip it a little bit, etc). I even wrote up something on how to do this in the distant past: http://rkgphotos.com/articles/scanning_final.pdf Good Luck, rkg (Richard george)

And going with the "in for a penny, in for a..." philosophy, don't forget another ~4-500 for a new habaki... And, oh yeah, a tsunagi to hold the koshirae together, because you don't leave a "good" sword in its koshirae... In general, having a top grade koshirae put together is kind of a vanity thing/something you do because you want it - there is no way to justify it economically. You can have an iai grade koshirae put together for not a tremendous amount of money (like: http://www.Japanese-swords.com/pages/restore.htm , though I'm sure I'd let him touch the blade..), but... No, this really isn't a hobby for the not-well-heeled so much anymore. You can still find pieces in the woodwork, but that's a bit of a fool's game unless you know what you are looking at/for. I think a LOT of collectors start out by finding a "treasure" somewhere (on fleabay, local auction, gun show, craigslist, relative, etc), though it seems like in the vast majority of cases the piece has so many problems its not worth restoring, or so much is paid for the piece that it doesn't make economic sense to restore it. There's a line of thinking that Noobs are best served by not treasure hunting and start out buying a "papered, polished, perfect" piece - this isn't a bad way to go as it usually costs a lot less than going through several "mistakes". Before spending any more money on the piece, you might consider making a pilgrimage to sword show or two and look at every sword there, preferably with some knowledgeable people to point out stuff to you - book learning is great, but not so helpful if you've never seen the activities on a piece in front of you, hefted an actual kamakura era piece (or 10) in hand to study the sugata, etc. there's one in Chicago next weekend for example. LOTS cheaper than going through the "buy, discover the problems, sell at a big loss" cycle repeatedly... On the books, you might also pick up Nakahara's Facts and Fundamentals of Japanese swords - I wish the book had been translated when I was a noob. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

I got one of those... Its a confusing piece - I actually suspect they're made with some sort of non-traditional steel (it looks pretty muji), and may or may not be oil quenched - the hamon is pretty complex, and there seems to be ji-nie (though it doesn't show well with the crappy wartime polish), but I've been told you see that sometimes in "better" oil quenched pieces. Its also my imaging test sword so I've got a bunch of images of it - not my best work, but... the second stamp is on the back side of the nakago (and I'm in the middle of tearing all my photoshop machines apart so I (of course) can't find an image of the back side right now :-/ ): http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... o_roth.jpg http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... etail2.jpg http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... 2_crop.jpg In terms of what to bid, I'd be wary of paying any more than you would for an oil quenched piece/be prepared to enjoy it as-is as it probably isn't worth polishing.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Here's some links to a couple of tadashige pieces I shot in the distant past/have permission to show images of: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... e_3852.jpg http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... e_3860.jpg Sorry about the small size - the originals are buried in an offline backup drive. Best, rkg (Richard George)

+1 on this. Evaluating and documenting a collection of this size is a LOT of work. Kudos to you for taking on this task for them (and I think it would be really cool to get the opportunity to image some of the pieces in this collection), but... While the members of this board have always been extremely generous (IMHO) in helping out people with identification of things, etc., it seems to me having to go through a large collection kantei-ing pieces is kind of over the top. If this work is really of value to the museum, I'd posit that they should look into shaking loose a few bucks to pay for appropriate consulting services/hire somebody to do the work. They don't like to admit to it/prefer to keep that aura of being fine charitable repositories of the past, but the sad truth is that museums are BUSINESSES - and if its for an exhibit they're receiving revenue from, well, you know... For example, while Mr. Haynes has always been generous with his time for students, he earned his living consulting on things like this - and now he's supposed to help out for free? Again, if he chooses to, kudos to him, but... The late Toren Smith had some amazing observations on the museum business - the trouble is that I don't recall if where these threads were now (the predecessor to the current NMB, one of Rich Turner's old websites or what) - Maybe somebody not suffering from CRS like me could dig 'em up and repost them. My apologies if I sound like an a** on this, but working for free when you probably shouldn't is one of my hot buttons - I'm frequently asked about imaging items and while I'm glad to help out really interested people/talented individuals I often later start getting asked for what amounts to free consulting services that somebody really should be paying my day rate to obtain... I'm sure I've posted this before, but this interview with Harlan Ellison is really germane as both warner brothers and museums are really in the same business (entertainment): Back to work, Best, rkg (Richard George)

You used to be able to get ivory scraps from instrument makers - don't know if you can anymore.. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, Brian's right - Due to the geometry of any of these cameras with the really tiny sensors any of them much larger than 7 megapixels or so is kind of a waste - you're just getting a larger blurrier image. the camera you got is OK, but next time you want to get one that you can at least manually focus and has a manual exposure mode - that usually solves a lot of problems you'll eventually run into - Auto exposure is the worst, as these pieces are dark, and the camera will do its best to over-expose it to look the same tone as an 18% gray. You should read the section on manually setting the white balance on your unit. The on-camera flash is only really of much use if you want to reveal the mei and maybe the shape of the piece , though sometimes you can either diffuse it or reflect it off to a secondary surface to get more useful lighting. Iron like this is usually pretty reflective (at least you hope it is :-) ), so you kind of have to light it from off angle to reveal the color well. +1 on some way to hold the camera (like a tripod) -I don't think Nikon's software lets you do much other than download unfortunately - next best thing is to use the timer. The nature of the light and your control of it is important. A good start down that dark path is: http://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Mag ... +and+magic the introductory sections, and the ones on lighting metal and glass.... Back to work... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Pete, Smaller spaces are very often rented on a half day/full day basis - I'd still posit its worth an email/phone call to the organizers to see if there's dead time in their room utilization unless its known they've got some other deal with the venue/they're already fully utilizing all the rooms. Again, it would be something else for people to do while at the event/the guy's offering to do it for free, so there's some benefit to them as well... +1 on using the facility's AV equipment. rkg PS: adjacent rooms are rented and they are expensive. From past experience they are not available unless you rent/pay for them yourself ($$$$$$$). PPS: renting equipment from the hotel is prohibitive. Just a projection screen can be a couple hundred dollars, a projector, $400. I've looked into it in the past.

That's actually a great idea - you know, a clever man (with a pile of inspection equipment) might approach Mr. Weissberg about making it a feature of the show and use one of the rooms they reserve for meibutsu or introductory sword classes when its not being used (I'm guessing they have to rent them for the whole time anyway) - sword/tosogu collectors are in general too cheap to actually pay for anything, but I'm sure if you wanted to let them paw your equipment under your watchful eye (after maybe getting to study their piece in hand-er, uh, show them how to use the gear first), you'd get a steady stream of interesting pieces to look at - Using a projector would make it a decent "group" activity - maybe two stations - one hooked to a projector, and the other for those who don't want to share for whatever reason... Heck, you might even fill the room if you just turned off the crappy overhead lights and provided some decent light sources... Best, rkg (Richard George)

The short answer is that you need to look at a fair number of good pieces in hand at your leisure - really look at them, more than once if possible, preferably with good light and decent magnification available (even though I'll study a piece for quite a while before shooting it, I'm very often amazed at what I "see" when I look at the blown-up images, even though I spent a while studying it with a magnifying glass prior to shooting) I don't believe its possible to 'get' these pieces from the images shown unless you've already carefully studied a number of others in hand first. Reference books are OK if you kind of know what you are looking at to begin with, but tosogu are devilishly hard to photograph well, and even then you're usually compromising something to show something else. On top of that, the pubs often aren't done with the highest quality printing possible, and often don't spring for enough images. Ideally there would be images from many angles (at least a front, back, oblique, and a magnified view (necessary IMHO, but few are willing to spring for the images/book space required)), but often you're lucky to get the front view, only shown 1:1 where most of the detail simply vanishes, etc. There's a lot of things that go into desirability - condition, rarity, quality of workmanship, historical significance, whether you personally like it or not, Whether anybody else likes it or not etc. The latter is important to the cost - what's the saying, "buy what you like, but invest in what others like..." Like Curran, I'm amazed how people spend so little time studying interesting pieces in the meibutsu room, though to be fair they often don't make it easy - you start drawing the wrong kind of attention when you start fawning over the piece with a magnifying glass (if it isn't behind glass to begin with), sometimes won't let you grab an image for your records (thank God most museums are over this silliness now), the lighting often sucks, good luck picking them up and looking at them from different angles, etc. I've long advocated for having tosogu displays with blown up images, a projector on a loop showing enlargements of the pieces, some kind of interactive display allowing access to an enlargeable VR sets or video of the pieces, 3-d images for pieces, or -something- to be displayed along with the pieces to help people "get" them, but I've been unsuccessful to date. You really need to be able to look at these pieces "large" to study them, and... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Guido, You're right - I had to go dig up the book and re-read that description in the Ono sction and you are correct - he only posits a potential linkage. I guess you have to know what the meaning of "is" is :-/. What was interesting about the Mikawa to Owari no Tanko comments though is that it shows this potential linkage isn't a new idea. The examples,etc. Fred Geyer has gathered together would seem to support this posited linkage to the Jesuit symbol, with it later on magically becoming a clock gear reference after Christianity was suppressed so you didn't risk getting offed for displaying that particular namban symbol. I personally believe that (most if not all of) the early tokei/harugama sukashi designs did not represent clock gear as they were very seldom if ever round/they often the flames at the ordinal (and semi ordinal? what are you supposed to call the ones every 45 degrees?) points that stuck up as connection points (and gears they came in contact with don't have varying length teeth), etc. Here's another early piece that shows this (the connection points are clearly longer "flames") - an ono: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/oh_no2.jpg And if you look at early IHS symbol examples, some were round, but others weren't, so... Of course, like so much in the study of earlier pieces, there really seems to be little if any period information to conclusively categorize much of anything one way or another so my observations could well be full of it, so... YMMV Best, rkg (Richard George) The way I read it, this motif *may* have been influenced by gear-wheels of clocks and/or the Jesuit sunburst symbol - purely as an art motif, not as a "Christian Tsuba".

Hi, Mikawa to owari no tanko also talks about this design starting out as a christian symbol. Its actually a symbol associated with the Jesuits. I'll attach a couple of examples. First the modern version of the symbol, and the next one is a (bad) image of a book that was in Japan when the Jesuits were there, showing their symbol on the cover. Fred Geyer also has one or more vases from the period showing the symbol (I have the image, but haven't had time to try and get ahold of Fred to see if I can post it...) - its actually shown in the 2013 KTK catalog if you want to see it... From the way you shot the piece I can't tell anything about the patina, so as a WAG, maybe edo owari? A number of schools made pieces with this symbol later on - I've owned ones from various regions in Owari, an akasaka piece, etc, and and I'm sure there were others... Best, rkg (Richard George)

True Story. I'm currently photographing some menuki that will show up in a future KTK catalog that are VERY different from each other (the primary is a silver/copper image of Fudo Myoo, the back side is a solid gold marker with a sanskrit symbol that stands for Fudo Myoo, and a nicely done lotus plant), though if you look at the backs you can tell from the residue that they were mounted together and I believe they were done by the same guy (though only the secondary piece is signed/dated). Best, rkg (Richard George)

I don't know about that - time is money and this would save a lot of time for anybody who trawls ebay for stuff... rkg