Toki

Interesting piece for sure !

Can´t say much about the blade, but the mekugi ana looks a bit off

Yes, exactly they look so big when in reality it is around 1 or 2mm at most. Had me scared for a second when I saw them in the pictures That is a lovely piece, especially the details on the saya.

And some more

Here are some more pictures. The big rust spot is below the Habaki.

Good evening everyone I hope everyone had an amazing christmas and got safely into the new year. Since my last post in october of last year, I was sort off burnt out on the topic of Nihonto. Probably trying to learn everything at once over the past year was not the right choice, like it is with university exams. Now, since a good 2 month break I finally have motiavation to dive back in. Over the past few days I reread all of the comments below my last post about photographing Nihonto as well as Darcy´s guide to find out what the most key points to improve are. But as last time, the results this time are far from perfect, although a good bit better than last time in my eyes. Setup For the setup I tried to copy Darcy´s guide as much as possible, using a glass floor from a shelf as the display base, with a warm white LED bar as the light source laying on it to provide equal lighting over the full lenght of the blade. Also, I covered the floor below it with near black (a very dark blue) cloth and had the glass panel a bit above it to create a sort of clean blackground. This enabled me to move the sword across rather than moving the camera. Speaking of the camera, it is still a Sony A6400, although this time fitted with a cheap makro lens I picked up not too long ago, namely the Peargear 60mm f2.8 MK2. I have been using it for nature photography over the last week and for the low price I am quite happy with this lens. I also got myself a tripod, giving me more freedom and flexibility in positioning the camera; especially compared to the music stand I had it strapped to last time. The Nihonto is still my Tensho era Wakizashi attributed to Noshu den Kanesaki. It is unsigned and not a masterpiece by any means, but it is fun to experiment and study with. This time, I mainly focused on the flaws of this blade. I was aware of all of those as I was informed by the seller during my visit at their shop as well as in our email converstations prior to the appointment, so there weren´t any bad surprises (fortunately). It is mainly a bunch of inactive rust and lots of little scratches. Although, there is what I think is a big scratch along the hamon on one side, please let me know if it is something else. Also, while reviewing the pictures in Lightroom, I noticed those little blue streaks, which I have never seen before, but I think they are longitudinal chromatic aberrations and not a flaw in the blade. I will try to fix those in the future. I will leave pictures of the flaws (and some features ) of the blade down below. If you have tips on what to further improve, I am looking forward to any kind of feedback :D Best Regards Erik

No idea why, but i love that saya

Thank you so much. I read something similar in Darcy´s article and am working towards a setup like that in the future I have an APS-C sized camera at the moment, although no macro lens (yet). The Tamron is nearing macro level, but of course no comparison to a dedicated one. Also that 2nd, close up shot looks insane! Indeed, they are the bane of me for now

Those are some beautiful photos Adam. Especially the one of the Boshi. May I ask where you had the light come from for that one? So far, my pictures of the Kissaki always have been either out of focus or with bad lighting, so it´s needless to say making out the Boshi is impossible. I´ll post two regardless, one with my phone and one with the camera yesterday.

Thank you @Lewis B for sharing those pictures. Those are some absolute beauties, even the Iphone shot is really cool. Shows that the photographer is more important than the equipment I totally agree with you that a macro lens is needed for capturing the maximum amount of detail and I plan on getting one in the future as well. For now, the Tamron is near macro level enough until I find a cheap one on ebay. The smarter way for me is probably investing in a decent setup with better (and different) lighting and a proper tripod. Unfortunately we swapped all lamps to LED a few years back, so I will need to get a halogen lamp/ normal light bulbs. I do have an old Sodium lamp though, so I might experiment with that. And lastly, for the next one I will for sure dust off everything around the blade first. I only realized when looking at the photos in Lightroom that there were particles here and there on the blade. Also, thank you so much Jean for clearing that up. You are correct, taking pictures, while challenging for me, is actually not the main problem. As a beginner its hard to know what exactly I should look for and what to photograph exactly, so i mainly tried to replicate what I see here on the forums. Unfortunately my current setup doesnt allow proper 90° top down shots, and certainly not in the correct orientation, but I will try and fix that in the future (along with lighting and background). Personally I found the kissaki area the hardest to shoot and did not manage to get decent lighting on it yet. I will update once I managed to build a proper setup Much thanks to you two again! Best Regards Erik

Great Idea, thank you!

Hello everyone :D As mentioned in my previous post, I had the pleasure to receive my first Nihonto last week. It´s been bringing me so much joy and motivation to learn more about those beautiful pieces of art. Naturally, as a hobby photographer, I always wanted to try taking pictures of them and now that I got a blade of my own, I can finally try my luck. It is a whole new field of photography for me, one that I am, quite frankly, unprepared for. Usually I shoot Landscape and Nature, with the occasional plane spotting trip to nearby military air bases. Macro photography however is completly new to me and my lacking equipment (I don´t even own a tripod. Foolish, I know). Reading all the resources and past posts here on Nihonto Message Board, especially Darcy`s PDF file about this topic, really helped me getting started and giving me a rough idea what to do and what to avoid. While it´s not exactly the setup mentioned in that article, I tried to copy it with what I had. I went with the following setup (will leave a picture below). For the enviroment I used the wooden box usually used for painting model planes with an airbrush. I hung up some dark cloth in it to have a proper background and placed a daylight LED-Panel on the Plexiglass roof of the box for the lighting. I used a secondary lamp for some diffusing background lighting and to set accents in the pictures. Since I do not own a tripod, the camera was fixed to a music stand using a cable tie. For the camera I used a Sony a6400 with the Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 lens. I chose it over the Sigma 30mm f1.4 for its lower minimum focus distance of 0.19m at wide angle of 17mm (~25mm if we take the 1.5x factor for APS-C into account) and 0.39m at maximum focal lenght. In terms of settings I chose a focal lenght of 25mm and apeture of F4.5 since I found that as a sweetspot where it is the sharpest in the past. I wanted to keep the ISO at 100, even though the a6400 has good noise control up until around 1600 ISO, as I worried it would interfere with the Hada and other details in the blade. Shutter was set at 1/15s since I was shooting on a stationary position anyways and not handheld. Personally, I would say for the second try ever at this the pictures are quite okay. Compared to the pictures in the last post I find the current ones a big upgrade. I found a big spot without Hada which I suspect is core steel (marked in red, correct me if I am wrong) that I somehow overlooked when inspecting it at the shop. Also, some little rustspots, scratches, and a few nicks in the mune, but I was already aware of those as the seller mentioned them in the listing. Overall, I find the blade quite nice to look despite those things listed. I will post a few of the better pictures below. All the pictures are cropped and compressed to JPG so I can do them all at once. If anyone wants the full sized ones, let me know. Also, any tips for better pictures are of course welcome! Thank you for listening my Ted Talk Have a nice day/night everyone

Thank you a lot for your kind words @Hoshi I tried capturing detail like hada etc, but with little success. It was visible on some, but I imagine its impossible to see, not that they are cropped like that. I actually forgot to include it, but it has NTHK papers, which attribute it to Noshu Den Kanesaki, stating the estimate era as Tensho. It sure does its job at bringing me joy and giving me things to dive into more All the best Erik

Pictures of the overall blade:

Hello everyone, After being interested in Nihonto for a while now, mainly due to practicing katana related martial arts, I managed to acquire my first one during a recent trip to Japan. It arrived last week, and I finally got the chance to try and take some pictures on the weekend, I will attach them below since I don´t know how to post them into the text here. While I am aware that this is by no means a top tier blade, the overall shape with the elongated Kissaki were quite attractive to me and it checked most of the boxes I wanted for my first blade. Furthermore it comes in full Koshirae, which at leas the Fuchi and Kashira are matching in a Takara-zukushi theme (not sure about the Tsuba honestly) and the Menuki seem resemble abalone shells. The main thing I was looking for was a blade at a reasonable price point where it doesn´t break the bank and that is pleasing to look at (for me). Also, I wanted to buy my first one in person, since it´s hard for me, as a beginner, to judge blades from pictures alone. The experience was well worth it, as I got introduced to proper maintenance as well as the basics for studying Japanese blades in person at the shop (for the record, I read a few books already but it´s always nice to learn in person). A visit at a nearby sword museum gave a nice closure to the day. For the blade itself: It is a shortened Wakizashi from around the Momoyama Period (Tensho). Due to it being a suriage blade, it is Mumei. The Nagasa is 44.6cm. Hamon seems to be Gunome mixed with Notare. As mentioned it has Koshirae as well as a Shirasaya. There are a few rust spots on the blade, but I was told those are inactive and not threatening to the blade. Let me know what you think Also, while writing this post I realized I forgot to take proper pictures of the overall suguta, so the phone pics will have to do for now.