Experimenting with light and angles.

[Lewis B]

I was playing with a different light source on my Senjuin TH papered kodachi. Fujifilm XT2 Laowa Macro lens, 250W Metal Halide bulb.

 

This sword was originally part of the Tsukamoto Sozan Museum collection and attributed to Go Yoshihiro.

 

 

[Lewis B]

[nulldevice]

Lovely photos showing some wonderful activity in the hamon! 

 

Did you have the blade laying flat on a cloth and positioned the light and camera to get the angle/focus correct? 

[Lewis B]

Would this style of boshi be considered a good representation of the fluidity of hakikake, kaen and nie kuzure described by Markus?

 

 

 

[Lewis B]

49 minutes ago, nulldevice said:

Lovely photos showing some wonderful activity in the hamon! 

 

Did you have the blade laying flat on a cloth and positioned the light and camera to get the angle/focus correct? 

Blade is resting on a sword pillow, flat or slightly tip up. The light source and camera angled then focused manually to observe the detail of interest.

[ROKUJURO]

Very beautiful! Must be a great pleasure to see it fully in-hand and not only small sections!

[Scogg]

That’s some Senjuin… 

 

That old Go attribution is beginning to make some sense. Stunning! Thanks for sharing.

-Sam

[eternal_newbie]

Excellent photography! I'm taking notes here...

[Takezo]

I can see why someone might attribute it that way. I think you might be inspiring everyone to get their swords and cameras out. Maybe we should pin this thread and everyone can practice their skills. I might try today after seeing these!

Edited August 22 by Takezo

[Lewis B]

A few more for inspiration

 

 

[Lewis B]

The last 2 photos really accentuate the hira-niku geometry, which combined with the slender motohaba, ko-kissaki and high/wide shinogi-ji leads to an archetypical Yamato-den blade sugata from the late Kamakura.

[Tetsu]

21 hours ago, Lewis B said:

Hi @Lewis B, very nice!  Better than 99% of photos we'll see here. 

 

The point source lighting of the metal halide bulb really brings out the nie, utsuri, and hada.  More diffuse lighting sources have their place, but Nihonto might not be one of them.  The color temperature of the bulb looks like it might be around 3000 Kelvin, I wonder how a higher temperature bulb might look, e.g. 5000K.  6500K is a 12:00 noon temperature, but tends to look blueish indoors.

 

Depth of field is a challenge when shooting in macro.  Using a tripod, keeping the length of the blade as close as possible to the plane of depth of field, while making the angle of the light source your only variable, might yield the best results (probably easier said than done with the metal halide bulb).

 

I too use Fuji cameras, and would highly recommend the Fuji XF 80mm f2.8 macro lens.  All macro aside, the 80mm has my favorite colors and contrast out of Fuji's entire XF lens lineup.  The 23mm (35mm equivalent) practically stays glued to my camera, but I look for excuses to shoot with the 80mm, even for non-macro photos.

[Lewis B]

55 minutes ago, Tetsu said:

Hi @Lewis B, very nice!  Better than 99% of photos we'll see here. 

 

The point source lighting of the metal halide bulb really brings out the nie, utsuri, and hada.  More diffuse lighting sources have their place, but Nihonto might not be one of them.  The color temperature of the bulb looks like it might be around 3000 Kelvin, I wonder how a higher temperature bulb might look, e.g. 5000K.  6500K is a 12:00 noon temperature, but tends to look blueish indoors.

 

Depth of field is a challenge when shooting in macro.  Using a tripod, keeping the length of the blade as close as possible to the plane of depth of field, while making the angle of the light source your only variable, might yield the best results (probably easier said than done with the metal halide bulb).

 

I too use Fuji cameras, and would highly recommend the Fuji XF 80mm f2.8 macro lens.  All macro aside, the 80mm has my favorite colors and contrast out of Fuji's entire XF lens lineup.  The 23mm (35mm equivalent) practically stays glued to my camera, but I look for excuses to shoot with the 80mm, even for non-macro photos.

Yes the metal halide is great at highlighting some features, especially the hataraki in the hamon. But for nie formations LED is my go to lightsource. The ko-nie is so fine it's best seen through a macro lens.

 

[Nazar]

@Lewis B, agree on LED lights.  Today I shot my first photos of my first nihonto that is in good polish. To be precise it's wakizashi. In my humble opinion the polisher did a great job following the real line of hamon, overshooting only slightly here and there, yet hadori is quite strong so it tends to conceal some features. 

 

I have no tripod for my camera with me, but I have emergency LED lights with integrated legs that form a tripod. Therefore I went for a vertical setup, when the blade positioned on the stand mostly vertically with mune upward.  With my old camera I didn't dare to go higher than ISO400, so to shoot photos with camera in my hands I had to place lights quite close. 

 

Here are some results. 

 

 

 

Edited August 22 by Nazar

[Lewis B]

Are you in B&W mode? The contrast is really nice.

[Nazar]

 

No, it's colour. I shoot these photos in colour with automatic white balance. I believe such an effect is caused by the more or less neutral spectrum of  my LED lamps. By the way, I used two of them  to "counterweight" each other.  I positioned lamps at a sharp angle to the blade to expose activities in hamon. With only one lamp there is gradient in illumination. Also my lens tends to catch some reflection. Looks like this idea is working as with two lamps both of these issues are solved. 

[Tetsu]

4 hours ago, Nazar said:

 

No, it's colour. I shoot these photos in colour with automatic white balance. I believe such an effect is caused by the more or less neutral spectrum of  my LED lamps. By the way, I used two of them  to "counterweight" each other.  I positioned lamps at a sharp angle to the blade to expose activities in hamon. With only one lamp there is gradient in illumination. Also my lens tends to catch some reflection. Looks like this idea is working as with two lamps both of these issues are solved. 

A polarizing filter will help with reflection and glare, but will cost you 2 F-stops (i.e. a tripod will become even more important).

[Nazar]

6 hours ago, Tetsu said:

A polarizing filter will help with reflection and glare, but will cost you 2 F-stops (i.e. a tripod will become even more important).

 

Thank you Dustin! Well, thinking about it, a tripod is not an issue. I have one in my motorcycle workshop in Kyiv. Bought it like a year before the war.  It's aluminum Benro with a fluid video head, so it will do. I'll ask the friend of mine to whom I left spare keys to send it to me. 

 

Polarizing filter is a simpler question. However, my main issue is that my Canon EOS600D is 15 years old and this summer I had to remove part of the shutter in order to continue shooting photos. With buying swords it's quite hard to spare some money to buy a new camera. Also, I was surprised to find out that the era of DSLR cameras ran to its end. 

 

And just to keep the topic up to the question of pictures, here are a few close-ups I shot using my improvised "macro lense" I use in combination with an 18-55mm lense. 

 

 

 

[Tetsu]

31 minutes ago, Nazar said:

 

Thank you Dustin! Well, thinking about it, a tripod is not an issue. I have one in my motorcycle workshop in Kyiv. Bought it like a year before the war.  It's aluminum Benro with a fluid video head, so it will do. I'll ask the friend of mine to whom I left spare keys to send it to me. 

 

Polarizing filter is a simpler question. However, my main issue is that my Canon EOS600D is 15 years old and this summer I had to remove part of the shutter in order to continue shooting photos. With buying swords it's quite hard to spare some money to buy a new camera. Also, I was surprised to find out that the era of DSLR cameras ran to its end. 

 

And just to keep the topic up to the question of pictures, here are a few close-ups I shot using my improvised "macro lense" I use in combination with an 18-55mm lense. 

 

 

 

Your pictures are rather good, thanks for posting them!   

 

As Voltaire once said, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."  In other words, pictures taken with an old camera (or under less than ideal circumstances) are better than none at all.

 

As LCD and OLED quality and latencies improved, camera manufactures started shifting away from through-lens mirrors to save cost and reduce body sizes.  A lot of purists still prefer DSLRs though, in the same way people such as myself still have a fondness for rangefinders.  Film was expensive and a hassle to deal with, but there are days I miss the look of film as well.  The movie "The Hateful Eight" was shot on Ultra Panavision 70 lenses in 2015, sometime old is better.  Which is why we're all here appreciating the craft of old swords, rather than modern ones made of spring steel. 

[Nazar]

7 hours ago, Tetsu said:

Your pictures are rather good, thanks for posting them!   

 

As Voltaire once said, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."  In other words, pictures taken with an old camera (or under less than ideal circumstances) are better than none at all.

 

As LCD and OLED quality and latencies improved, camera manufactures started shifting away from through-lens mirrors to save cost and reduce body sizes.  A lot of purists still prefer DSLRs though, in the same way people such as myself still have a fondness for rangefinders.  Film was expensive and a hassle to deal with, but there are days I miss the look of film as well.  The movie "The Hateful Eight" was shot on Ultra Panavision 70 lenses in 2015, sometime old is better.  Which is why we're all here appreciating the craft of old swords, rather than modern ones made of spring steel. 

 

 

Thank you, Dustin. I understand that. I am old enough, so when I was a teenager I got first hand experience with film cameras and a full circle of developing films and B/W photos. Dark room, red light,  all those things. Next time I returned to photography when I was around 25. It was around 2006. And I completely fell in love with this hobby. Combining motorcycles and photo shooting seemed to be only natural.  My first DSLR camera was a Canon EOS600D. It rode with me for many tens of thousand kilometers. It lasted for a long time, but I wore it down, so I was forced to replace it with an EOS600D around 2013 if I remember it all correctly. I also experimented with lenses from film cameras.  The Soviet 135mm f/3.5 MC (Multi-Coated) Jupiter 37A lens (which is known to be a copy of MC Sonnar 3,5/135 Carl Zeiss Jena DD) became my favorite lens. I only stopped shooting photos in 2022 when war came here. Swords made me return to this hobby of mine though.

So I could say that I am indeed a DSLR person. I dropped following camera trends some years before the war, so when this summer I checked what DSLR camera I could buy from Canon to replace my EOS600D it was kind of a shock that things changed so greatly. I was pondering for quite a long time if I should go for the mirrorless digital camera. So far I think it would be a better thing to buy the latest DSLR possible, maybe of a better class than I used to. 

[Lewis B]

You don't need a fancy camera or lenses. These were taken in daylight with an iPhone 12 Mini

 

[Lewis B]

[CSM101]

The real problem is,that you need to know a lot about Japanese swords, photography and Photoshop. 

 

Sony Alpha 99 II with a Sigma 150 macro.

[Tetsu]

7 hours ago, Nazar said:

 

 

Thank you, Dustin. I understand that. I am old enough, so when I was a teenager I got first hand experience with film cameras and a full circle of developing films and B/W photos. Dark room, red light,  all those things. Next time I returned to photography when I was around 25. It was around 2006. And I completely fell in love with this hobby. Combining motorcycles and photo shooting seemed to be only natural.  My first DSLR camera was a Canon EOS600D. It rode with me for many tens of thousand kilometers. It lasted for a long time, but I wore it down, so I was forced to replace it with an EOS600D around 2013 if I remember it all correctly. I also experimented with lenses from film cameras.  The Soviet 135mm f/3.5 MC (Multi-Coated) Jupiter 37A lens (which is known to be a copy of MC Sonnar 3,5/135 Carl Zeiss Jena DD) became my favorite lens. I only stopped shooting photos in 2022 when war came here. Swords made me return to this hobby of mine though.

So I could say that I am indeed a DSLR person. I dropped following camera trends some years before the war, so when this summer I checked what DSLR camera I could buy from Canon to replace my EOS600D it was kind of a shock that things changed so greatly. I was pondering for quite a long time if I should go for the mirrorless digital camera. So far I think it would be a better thing to buy the latest DSLR possible, maybe of a better class than I used to. 

My first digital camera was the Sony F707.  It was only 5 MP, but the attached lens was a macro Zeiss, which is timeless.  Looking back at samples from 2001, they still hold up very well, 25 years later.  In retrospect, I wish I had kept it, but gave it to my parents when I upgraded to the Nikon D70 DSLR.  F707's are still floating around eBay in a variety of conditions, but probably worth the < $100 USD for what the lens alone (and 5 MP is often enough).

 

I still have B/W photos from a college class in the early 90's.  The lesson I learned at the time was:  never take a graded class on something you enjoy as a hobby, the forced creativity will ruin the hobby for you.  In my humble opinion, at least 90% of the beauty of a Nihonto an be captured with B/W alone.

[Tetsu]

1 hour ago, CSM101 said:

The real problem is,that you need to know a lot about Japanese swords, photography and Photoshop. 

 

Sony Alpha 99 II with a Sigma 150 macro.

You raise the point of Photoshop expertise, which is a conversation unto itself.  On one end of the spectrum, we have artistic freedoms in Photoshop, which are a fanciful fictitious representation.  On the other end of the spectrum, we start with a photo with poorly photographed levels of contrast and white balance which need a bit of work in Photoshop, to faithfully represent the blade as we would experience with our own eyes handling the blade in real life.

 

Another example, a set of Yoroi (armor) can be made to look much better in Photoshop than in person by increasing the color saturation.  If a dealer is doing this, we might consider it unscrupulous.  If pictures are being added to a book, we might be more forgiving of artistic freedoms with the original photos.

 

Everyone is going to have their own opinions on what constitutes the "goldilocks zone" of workflows in Photoshop.  I think both artistic and authentic representations have merit depending on the circumstance.

[Nazar]

9 hours ago, Tetsu said:

My first digital camera was the Sony F707.  It was only 5 MP, but the attached lens was a macro Zeiss, which is timeless.  Looking back at samples from 2001, they still hold up very well, 25 years later.  In retrospect, I wish I had kept it, but gave it to my parents when I upgraded to the Nikon D70 DSLR.  F707's are still floating around eBay in a variety of conditions, but probably worth the < $100 USD for what the lens alone (and 5 MP is often enough).

 

I still have B/W photos from a college class in the early 90's.  The lesson I learned at the time was:  never take a graded class on something you enjoy as a hobby, the forced creativity will ruin the hobby for you.  In my humble opinion, at least 90% of the beauty of a Nihonto an be captured with B/W alone.

 

I experimented with B/W too, yet later on I switched to colours. In case with nihonto it might be that B/W would work great, because colour may distract from the subject itself. Especially if two sources of light of different kinds are present. The key to this may be in choosing neutral light and checking that no other sources of light interfere with main one/ones.

 

All in all, it's great to combine both: collecting nihonto and photography. I am looking forward to doing some further experiments. 

[Rivkin]

I think the images are really good. Its most likely something from Edo period, or at least the very end of Muromachi  - and those blades react very well to almost any direction of light. Old lenses also will work very well because much of the nuances associated with more modern designs are not efficient in the setup. Yes, the camera world moved away from DSLR if only because electronic viewfinders on things like Leica SL3 are nothing short of phenomenal. But Canon 5R and Nikon D850 present great value for their current prices and will not become obsolete.

Edited August 24 by Rivkin

[eternal_newbie]

I hope to someday find a light source neutral enough that we can photograph the "bluish-purple" steel of Masamune or the "deep blue" of old Bizen.

 

I do see swords with a bluish sheen on some dealer websites but I think this is a function of their lightning temperature since all their listed blades, even shinto and gendaito, appear with the same colouring.

[Lewis B]

17 minutes ago, eternal_newbie said:

I hope to someday find a light source neutral enough that we can photograph the "bluish-purple" steel of Masamune or the "deep blue" of old Bizen.

 

I do see swords with a bluish sheen on some dealer websites but I think this is a function of their lightning temperature since all their listed blades, even shinto and gendaito, appear with the same colouring.

I think I see this effect you mention on Touken Takarado and Unique Japan images. Would be interesting to know the light sources they use.

[Nazar]

On 8/24/2026 at 10:01 AM, Rivkin said:

I think the images are really good. Its most likely something from Edo period, or at least the very end of Muromachi  - and those blades react very well to almost any direction of light. Old lenses also will work very well because much of the nuances associated with more modern designs are not efficient in the setup. Yes, the camera world moved away from DSLR if only because electronic viewfinders on things like Leica SL3 are nothing short of phenomenal. But Canon 5R and Nikon D850 present great value for their current prices and will not become obsolete.

 

 

Thank you Kirill, 

 

You are completely right, it reacts very well to light. I am trying to kantei this wakizashi on my own, however my chances to get it right is quite low. So I'll create a separate topic some time later. It would be unfair for this sword to shoot some quick photos and post them. It's also a pleasure to be in no hurry, enjoying the sword through  both the naked eyes and camera viewfinder. As for the camera, I believe that first I have to figure out the setup for shooting photos of swords using a tripod and my old camera. Currently waiting for the arrival of my tripod to start experiments.