kizu finder

[Stephen]

PC Geek turned me on to this today, take your laptop to a show and plug itin, scan the blade.

 

http://www.pcgears.com/default.aspx?oid=223384

[Bugyotsuji]

That's pretty good!

[Brian]

With the built in led lights, might also be great for taking close up shots of mei so that they can be compared to shoshin examples. Lovely for those tosogu shots too.

 

Brian

[rkg]

Actually, having the lights all around the tip like that will blow out most of the surface on highly reflective/flat-ish things

(look at their quarter image, for example), though you might be able to do some good by slipping some paper

to block some of the light from LED ring so you get darkfield illumination going on, or block some of the LEDs

so you can get some contrast/shadows...

 

Best,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[Stever]

For those that are interested, here are a couple of snaps taken with one of these things, with different lighting (the LEDs have 3 settings: off, low and high). I picked one up for work (;D) from eBay (just search "usb microscope") for ~$60. 1.3 megapixels, 10 - 200x. Resolution isn't the best and focusing is a bit of a pain (the image isn't very stable while using focus). One thing I did notice while using this thing that I hadn't previously noted, is the poor polishing job in certain areas of the kogatana I used as a guinea pig (see the scratches on the ha in the first snapshot).

 

Thanks, Stephen for pointing these out.

 

cheers,

/steve

[Brian]

Thanks for sharing Steve.

With the leds off, and maybe using external (maybe torch?) light at different angles, looks like it may have some use for examining nie, tosogu and hataraki. I think a good camera might do the same, but definitely some interesting shots there and worth experimenting with. I assume you can angle it in place and then leave both hands free to work with lighting and the item? Like having a camera on a tripod but in macro mode?

 

Regards,

Brian

[KRM]

Thanks for the heads up about eBay. I just ordered one and will post a few more example pics as soon as it comes in. I've got a decent camera, but no macro lens for it (and the $68.50 i paid for this gadget is far less than a decent macro lens would run). I spent about an hour yesterday with a loop going over a very small trinket attached to a yatate trying to figure out if it was bone or ivory (concerned about export issues). I'm hoping that this cheap device will make jobs like that easier on my eyes.

 

Thanks again for the tip,

Kevin