Toki

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.

That’s what I’m wondering too. Choji seems to be very atypical for Mino, at least in the few books I have read so far. Let’s hope Jacques gives us an explanation for his attribution as I would be very interested in why his differs so much from the rest here. Did we oversee anything😅? Or is it due to the high production output of Mino smiths?

As a Newbie, what brought you to that conclusion? Genuinely curious

Probably depends on the size/weight. I paid for a wakizashi with EMS around 20.000 JPY if I read it correctly on the invoice.

As a newbie, I just observe, try to learn as much from the conversation when it´s not full of salt and ignore the fighting really.

There seem to be a lot of hijacked ebay accounts recently

Hi, While I´m nowhere near fluent and still just a beginner, I attended Japanese basic classes at my University. And now, while we are on semester break, I just work through the books while using Anki to learn/refresh Kanji.

I will once I had it in hand and have better pictures.

Lovely Wak

Thanks for the advice, it´s truly appreciated. Although there is a wakizashi that i really like visually that goes against all of those....should I skip it then? (serious question)

Cant have things going too well on the internet, can we?

I think the main concern is the lack of disposable income, as someone mentioned on a similar post. Like with many other things (Affording real estate i.e.), the older generation had it easier. The minimum wage was higher if you factor in the inflation over the years, and the lack of knowledge made it easier for those with a certain understanding to score better pieces to lower prices. From what I can read online, with more information the prices of pieces rose substantually. On the other hand, it makes it way more accessible to have important works translated to english and widely available I think this is the main problem, why younger people have it harder to start with collecting. In my friendgroup (22-25yo) we have a similar sentiment when it comes to real estate. Why should I work my ass off, when I cannot afford anything nice in the end anyways. Therefore I could see the same happening here too, why put in the effort when you are unable to own the thing you want in the end. I do not know exact numbers for nihonto, but I imagine that the number of undiscovered swords that are in a restorable condition is significantly lower these days, and therefor the chances of barn finds are so much lower, reducing the thrill and motivation to hunt blades. Also depending on who you buy from, the prices can be marked up quite a bit (looking at you, EU market). I think there is quite a good amount would love to learn, but are turning away due to not finding a clear entry point in the masses of information and disinformation, especially online. Or they buy one hastely and get burnt. That and the prices can be a real turnoff. Another thing, which I´m yet to see it in this field, but have experienced when it comes to collecting rocks and gemstones (my other obsession), is older members of the community spreading misinformation to gatekeep beginner collectors. And on the other hand, you have the sweetest most helpful guys ever, so your experience is entirely dependant on who you meet first. That is not necessarily a bad thing, I use them to have a cheap blade to do cutting exercises with. And honestly, it is better for some people if they buy this than to ruin an antique due to lack of knowledge about maintance or abusing it for cutting tests etc. If this sounds like I am blaming older generations for everything, that is not my intent. They laid the groundwork for everything Nihonto are today, be it books, research and so on, which I am incredibly grateful for, so please, do not take offense.

I must say,from lurking around in this forum I have not noticed people treating saving up for Nihonto as a taboo, quite the opposite actually. That being said, I will admit that I´m also guilty of not waiting years before making my first purchase. Having spent the last half year or so reading books, articles and forum posts here, it is unecessary to say I am inexperienced and could use more time studying. But I also do not know when I have the chance to travel to Japan and inspect them in person again. I should probably mention that I´m looking for an affordable entry/study piece and am simply going by what period and school I like with no intention to resell it any time soon, at least not for profit. My goal is to get a cheaper one first, then study and save up more to then safely make a higher tier purchase in the future The only two requirements I set myself are that it has to be papered (so i can learn more about its origins, therefore I dont mind NTHK papers at all) and that it has to be from a reputable selller. Is it smart to just buy out of impulse? Probably not. But with other collecting hobbies i learned that always saving for the next milestone leads to enjoying the price and reputation of a higher tier item more than the item itself.

23 for me. Will be getting my first this summer

Personally I like how it looks. However I will leave any suggestion wether to go for it or not to the more experienced members here.

Now why would you add that as an argument to buy it. How do you even accidentally cut your calf when unsheathing a blade?

Thanks a lot mecox!

Seems i was in the wrong, sorry for the false Information. @mecox would it be possible to link the list from Sesko? I would love to learn from it.