large photo of ko-uda piece

[rkg]

Hey guys,

 

After nearly 2 years of helping to close the family business its mostly done

(YEY!), and I FINALLY have some time to start fooling around with high resolution sword photos again - If you're interested, please check out the test photo at:

 

http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/ko_uda.jpg

 

I reduced its dimensions by a factor of two to keep the file size down, + I can see there was a bit of image degradation due to the jpeg compression, but still... Its a 2 megabyte+ file, so it might take a while to load for you. Not what I'd call a final by any means, but...

 

 

Enjoy,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[Curran]

Richard,

 

Pretty awesome image. Ready for a bunch of us to ask you to photograph our swords?

[b.hennick]

Great photo! I love the hada. There is more masame than I would have expected.

[Darcy]

Extremely extremely good and detailed. I trust this is the stuff we were discussing? Looks like you got it to work very well. I have some ideas about implementation...

[rkg]

Hi,

 

Sorry, I got busy and didn't get a chance to reply...

 

I'll run all the replies together to save on postings...

 

Note that I found I had messed up the masking in the nakago ana and have reposted a fixed version of the picture to the same location.

 

Curran:

 

The method does look about ready for prime time, so I guess I can talk to people about that now.

 

Mr. Hennick:

 

While it does look like what people call a ko-uda piece to me, number of pieces I've actually been able to study is small :-/ It doesn't help any that it seems like ko-uda is a dumping ground for nanbokucho yamato pieces that the shinsa team can't identify - kind of a proto "shinto bungo takada" :-)

 

Darcy,

 

It was a test run, so I didn't have the lighting set up for the boshi, and actually didn't have the nakago illumination set correctly, so it washed over the hada towards the munemachi, but... as per your emailed comments I also redid the post process on the photo posted above to (hopefully) fix the pixellation issues...

 

Best,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[AndreasU]

Hi Richard,

 

nice photo!! Can you enlighten me a bit how you did the setup? Is it the "Glasbottom" style? I am a proud owner of a Pentax K10d and would love to do some nice photos of my sword.

 

Which lense did you use?

[rkg]

Andreas,

 

Sorry to take so long to reply - I've been doing about 10 things at once, and...

 

Yeah, this photo was done on a big sheet of plexiglass - I don't recommend glass, as its harder than your sword - and even with plexiglass you have to be anal about getting/keeping it clean(dust can be abrasive) and careful not to move your piece around on the surface.

 

I used a macro lens, though I'm not sure what to recommend for your

pentax as I'm not sure how much height above the piece you have/what lenses are available for your camera - just be sure the lens can resolve more than your sensor can across the field of view and you'll do as good as you can (there are a couple of sites that do objective tests of lenses). you can also squeeze out a bit more effective resolution by turning the camera so the sword is in the diagonal.

 

Good Luck,

 

rkg

(Richard George)