19 March 2008 Details of my shakuhachi
The shakuhachi itself dates from the early 20th century, but the gold leaf (maki-e) was applied recently by a friend of my teacher who just happened to be the official maki-e artist of the Japanese Imperial Household.
Back hole
Root end. You can see the roots. The chrysanthemum motif you see in these last two is the symbol of the Japanese emperor, but it’s OK to use it as long as the number of leaves differs from the official seal.
3 comments in “Details of my shakuhachi”
March 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I didn’t know that PVC pipe had a “root end” ;-)
A friend just got the Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 macro, and we were surprised to find that as the subject gets closer (and the magnification gets higher), the widest “effective aperture” gets smaller, so by the time you’re at 1:1 macro, it’s about f/4 or so.
Is the Zeiss like that?
March 19th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
My old Tamron 90 macro did the same thing.
The Zeiss doesn’t appear to, but since the aperture is controlled manually on the aperture ring, it’s possible that the effect is there but not transmitted from the lens to the camera because it’s not properly chipped or something. Maybe I’ll ask on dpreview.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Great shots and an interesting subject! I had noticed the shakuhachi section on your home page a few weeks ago so it’s neat to see what you use “up close”