It also depends on the angle of the lighting, the exposure, and what was done by way of correction or enhancement in image editing afterwards. Abd bead-blasted surfaces are better-behaved for photography or scanning than satin-finish, and satin finish is better-behaved than a high polish.
For example, in this scan of
satin-finished Moki knives, the finishing grit lines are positioned at an angle across the light path. If they were parallel to the light path, the blades would come out either glaring-white or nearly black, depending on whether the surface sloped up from the glass away from or toward the "head" of the scanner.
In this scan of some
mirror-polished hollow-ground blades, we
know the blades don't have that "rainbow-blued" in real life.
In a Sebenza, if the blade is polished and the handle is polished, the grit lines on the handle are lengthwise, and the grit lines on the blade go across. In this scan of a
wood-inlay Sebenza, I positioned it to get a decent image of the blade along with a good reproduction of the wood, and so the handle, with the grit lines at only a slight angle to the scanner path, comes out darker than it would if the knife was turned the other way, as in this scan of
CGG Sebenzas, where the same surface finish is positioned across the light path. Notice in that picture that the little bits of polished blade surface (the hollow grind, not the stone-washed part) that you can see next to the thumb stud or through the holes in the handles came out an obnoxious glaring white.
Still experimenting . . .
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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
