New tsuba

[Antti]

No more newbie questions, but I do have a new tsuba. Once again I'm looking for your comments and opinions.

 

This one came from Lody Duindam at Token Sugita Europe. A throughly pleasant transaction. I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to Curran, who has been helping me with many questions I've had, therefore preventing me from flooding this fine forum. :lol:

 

I've also bought several books, including the Haynes Tosogu Index.

 

I found this tsuba very harmonious, and balanced. The signature is Masaaki, Curran noted that this is a dead ringer for H.03830.0 (born 1739). As my previous tsuba, it comes with NBTHK Hozon papers. My favourite thing about this tsuba is the irregular amida yasurime. Although not rare, I found this this design a lot more pleasant than the regular ones seen on many others.

 

Size: 86,2 x 79,6 x 4,2 mm

 

The pictures were taken with a smartphone again, so I had huge difficulties getting the color right. Here they are anyway, sorry about the quality.

Perhaps this, a sellers photo, has captured the color better.

http://www.tokensugita.com/TS106.jpg

[Ken-Hawaii]

Very nice, Antti. Glad you're buying quality tsuba.

 

Ken

[raven2]

Good job, Antti. I like it very much.

[BMarkhasin]

Nice find. Simple and elegant.

Boris.

[Markus]

I almost bought that tsuba some years ago! Enjoy it, its a nice one!

[Soshin]

Hi Antti S.,

 

Nice tsuba but the first photo is really bad... Please ask the dealer if you can use his photo. :lol:

[Toryu2020]

Beautiful! thank you for sharing,

[Antti]

Mr. Stiles I know the pictures are bad. We took about 100 photos with the smartphone and these are the ones that somewhat made it. The camera needs a lot of light to get clear photos, but then the color goes slightly wrong. I wanted to get some shots in sunlight, but in Finland, in January, sunlight is in very short supply. I am in a dire need of a good camera, or perhaps a friend with a good camera. I am not much into photography myself and wouldnt like to spend on a good, expensive camera just for the purpose of taking photos of tsuba. Money is tight as it is.

[Stephen]

Nice Tsuba, envy, dont worry about comments about photos, very hard with cell phones, you did well.

[christianmalterre]

You did very well!

Good and correct Tsuba,strong and powerfull design...you bought it from Lody,it´s an piece known to some of us here in Europe,it´s iron is of very good quality....

in sum:

You made everything very correct here in mine eyes!

You did learn!-That´s good!

(Keep on Going!)

 

Christian

[Antti]

I'm very glad you liked it gents!

 

I gave it some gentle TLC with a soft toothbrush and mild soapy water, and I got rid of that smudge seen on the dealer's photo, on the seppa dai, on the right side, opposite to the signature.

 

However, I think there are some rust spots visible on the surface in the first photo. Especially above the seppa dai. Are those... I dont know the word to use here, but "dangerous"? Should immideate action be taken to remove these, or should I just let them be?

I doubt the toothbrush wont get them out. The picture was of course taked against light, and perhaps they are not as bad as they look in the photo, but still clearly visible.

 

I'm always scared one of my tsuba will deteriorate somehow while it's in my possession :?

Kind of like those dreams some people have about their teeth falling out :lol:

[John A Stuart]

Is this tsuba made by Tomiaki 富明 ? John

[k morita]

Is this tsuba made by Tomiaki 富明 ? John

 

Hi, :D

The signature is Masa-aki. 當 明 also 当 明

 

An old style kanji 當 same as 当

[Brian]

Antti,

You don't need a great camera to do decent pics. I see everyone going to 12MP and higher digital slr cameras nowdays. But for posting on a website, you don't need much. I have good cameras, but for web stuff, I just haul out an old Sony 2.1 MP camera with a decent macro function, and it takes pictures fine. You end up resizing them to about 1200 pixels wide anyways, at about 100 dpi.

These cameras can be found in any pawnshop or used for about $30-50 nowdays. They do a much better job than cellphones, and cost very little.

Any sword/tosogu collector needs a digital camera..not high end.

 

Brian

[John A Stuart]

Thank you Morita san. John

[Antti]

Thanks Brian for your advice. I've tried to take pictures with two inexpensive small digital cameras and they were both awful, when trying to take close up shots. Serious focusing problems. The reason might be my complete incompetence with cameras, but I doubt it. That Samsung Galaxy S? the pictures were taken with was actually pretty decent, and did a better job at it than the cheap digital cameras. I've actually been thinking about a digital microscope that could also take pictures. It would also be great for examining the steel.

 

I'd still like your opinion about the rust spots (see my last message).

[Antti]

All right, I decided to act according to Brian's instructions and bought myself a camera. Nikon Coolpix 3400 seemed to be on sale for 99€, so I scraped the bottom of my war chest and bought it.

 

I can get quite nice shots in macro mode with flash, but of course it ruins the real color and causes reflections. Without flash, it seems that the picture is always blurred, no matter how much lighting I try to add to the background. I took about a 100 shots, these were probably the best ones. If you have any good tips on how to take pictures of tsuba with a low-end camera, I'd be interested finding out. Especially the lighting issue could use a few pointers.

 

The last picture is quite nice even

[Dr Fox]

Hi Antti

 

What a pleasing piece! Not a tsuba collector, but I would have a place for that one.

 

The posted photos are fine.

 

You are also buying wisely and in the right places.

[Brian]

Nice!

Never use flash when doing tsuba. Just use macro mode, hold in the button until it focusses, and complete the button press. Use natural light. Inside a room I find best, as outside you get too many shadows. But avoid any fluorescent lighting..that will never work.

Btw..I am a complete photography novice, so someone here with better knowledge will advise you more.

But these pics look great.

 

Brian

[Stephen]

a nice tripod hleps a alot and use timer so it dont move after your hands are off.

[Antti]

Ah the timer is a good idea! Thanks! This tiny camera would look very silly on a tripod

 

Funnily enough it seems that the lighting in my flat (man made lighting) doesnt seem to be enough. Using exactly the same technique, with flash, nice crispy photos, without, blurry as hell. Sunlight is in damn short supply currently, so perhaps when that orange bastard finally shows itself, I will open the curtains and get down to business. I'll read some guides about macrophotography and see where it takes me. However the photos are on a barely acceptable level at the moment, so this'll do for now.

[Dr Fox]

Antti

 

Your photos blur without flash, because your camera is starved of enough light to auto focus with. A tip. try using the sill at your window allowing daylight to fall on your work. Another dodge is to use a light on the table, with a 'daylight hobby bulb, in it. Two such lights will dodge shadows to where you want them. both cheap fixes.

[Dr Fox]

Hi Antti

 

What a pleasing piece! Not a tsuba collector, but I would have a place for that one.

 

But having said that amongst the bits and pieces was this!! Close but not close enough.

[Antti]

Yeah I had a hunch that it might be the lighting issue. I have one lamp on the ceiling right on top of the table I'm taking the pictures on, and a floor lamp that I can direct where-ever I want.

 

That daylight hobby-bulb thingie sounds interesting, although I've never heard from it. I'll see whether I can find one at the local supermarket. Would be perfect for my floorlamp.

 

Nice tsuba, looks old to me. Could you share some info? Tosho? Shoami?

[Dr Fox]

Antti

 

Look for the bulbs at a hobby store, my wife does cross stitch, and these bulbs light the work.

 

As to the origin of this tsuba, the board has given me a yen to explore tsuba. (The wife is not too pleased,"more money" ) So perhaps the guys on here, could point us in the right direction?

[raven2]

Very nice tsuba, Antti. You did a nice job on the pics with your new camera. It just goes to show you that if you take enough pictures, sooner or later you will get some good ones. :D In all seriousness, a tripod would help a lot.

[rkg]

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)

[Antti]

Thank you for you detailed reply mr. George.

 

The camera I bought was just an attempt to get something half decent on a very tight budget.

 

I do not understand completely all its functions yet. But it does have a "exposure compensation" slider and White Balance slider. The autofocus mode can be set to manual, but I havent quite figured out how that works. As I said I'm on a tight budget, and perhaps in future I can buy a better camera. Until then, I'll do my best to compensate the weaknesses of the camera with several tricks you people have told me.