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munehisa uchigatana


parfaitelumiere

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I bought this sword 4 years ago.
Uchigatana blade signed "munehisa" ,there is a 1cm suriage.
Nagasa is 61cm
Damn, taking pictures is very hard, I don't know how do aoi Japan to take 7500 px large perfect pictures of their blades...I used black reflector for shinogi, and white reflector for mune, but hardest part is to catch the temperline details, especially with this hadori polish...
I have several issues with that polish, don't like the hadori in general, but this one has strong needle on shinogi, hard uchigumori on jihada, making it very hard to see and looking like defects everywhere, even there are some core steel spotsvisible (bottom picture) and last but not least, the hazuya finish, I hate this, do you think it should be interesting to make a new finish, hadori or not, but more subtile and mastered stone choice?
Very very superficial rust on the shinogi, can be removed probably just my new uchigumori finish.

 

IMG_0935.thumb.JPG.41d15493bff052794628051a18694959.JPG

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I also struggle to shoot swords but one thing I've noticed is that to "see through the hadori", you need to shoot the sword sideways.

 

The hamon is the whitest when shot this way.

 

image.thumb.png.6ddc0195bc98a05c4ad68035ab878343.png

 

While shooting sideways will show more details of the hamon.

 

image.thumb.png.0c00bc196af743f266d8479809f570d8.png

 

Pictures from https://www.aoijapan.com/wakizashisunnobi-tantoise-tamaru-junin-fujiwara-nagatoshi-saku/

 

Edit: I'm thinking that maybe the first picture is not a photography but a scan of the blade. I know Aoi's photo setup has been discussed before but I forgot what was said.

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I was thinking about scan too but it' very strange as the work is perfect, and not blurry, most of times, scan are ok with flat piece close to the glass, but as there is relief, 3D shape, as you get away from the glass, it's getting blurry.
So my guess is more a photography.
I saw their 7000 px long pictures are in fact 3500 px long pictures, far easier to take, I will make attempts, it needs a high light box with a hole on top to the camera, a black background under the blade, and some white and black reflectors, whote for mune to put it visible, black for shinogiji to put them dark, that was the process I made for my blade, also not put the blade parallel to camera, but a very bit off, so the hamon gets lighter through the hadori, and also, much easier to get the black shinogi ji, as the camera and black reflector are not exactly on same axis.
most easy would be light box, with white walls and completely black roof and floor, mains issue is the focal lenght, if I use my 180mm I have to get about 4,8m away from blade for a full picture, and using the 85mm I still have to be about 2m away, if I use the 50mm, the shape will be really off.*In this specific cas the eos remote function can be very useful!
 

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I found the post: here. The 7000 px are apparently made possible by the use of a very high resolution camera (Hasselblad).

 

Quote

if I use the 50mm, the shape will be really off

 

Is this really a problem ? Lightroom knows the distortion for most of the lenses and can fix it in post-production. 

 

Your photo setup looks amazing BTW

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but changing shape is not taking a picture, makes me thing of the horrible computing to make a wide angle lens picture look square, this is not good.
I took a look at 100% on the aoi Japan,one pixel is four pixel, making the real size half the actual file size.
Easy to see when displayed at 100% you can see large pixels, and once you make a 50% display, you get full resolution.
Btw the informations on your link are very interesting.
I made new attempts to shoot complete blades, not yet what I want:
IMG_.thumb.jpg.58e42fc0ca0de8f52e0195f3dd8576c8.jpg
the picture is 4200 px in size, taken from about 5 meters high, black silk velvet as background, this is the darkest background I found for now.
Sadly it tends to take the dust, and everything very easy, from thousands of pictures,  only a very few got a pure black background without post treatment.
I used the 180 macro lens, on a old 6D camera, hand held, 400 iso  1/320 F 9, hand held no stab used, automatic focus, but using the wall as support to get less blurr.
No way to get the black shinogi ji, i would need a specific built, but can be done, same for better quality, upgrade the camera, and use a fixed display, to reduce iso and remove blurr, also could be possible to make the hand focus, best would be wired to computer or ipad, because ipad screen is far better than camera screen, remote works very well, because you can manage the focus much better, and you can have live view, zooming and know the exact result in live.
This 180 lens is very good, the camera is a bit old now, a new one would get much better results.

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