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Spent a bunch of time taking photos of the two decks, but had some poor results - I’ll be retaking the shots of the cards themselves shortly (aside from the colors being washed out and general loss of hsbc like qualities, they were all sideways)

Latest arrival - Elaine Lewis, Wild West Transformation deck

And yes, I am finally going to get a camera this week so I can get pics of the Karls and Elaines…

Damn mate... Some very nice pick ups since I've visited this thread the last time. Those poker tiles are neat. I'd love to gamble with those.

Had my eye on this one for a while - plenty out there but patiently awaited one to come along for the right price - that day has come - will unbox here as I make my way through the backlog

The 500 Arhats by Takashi Murakami

The deck went along with an art exhibition: https://wanderfuljapan.wordpress.com/20 ... 00-arhats/

Oooh, I really like those. What was the price that got you to pull the trigger?

In searching for it, I see Murakami also did an UNO deck that is super tempting.

I nabbed it for $25 including shipping (really a steal and quite surprised my snipe was as effective as it was - I think I bid 40 or 50) - didn’t have any luck finding it cheap in Japan but I did pick up a copy of the 500 arhats miniature book that he did for the same exhibition as a companion piece - also for $25

I knew he had the uno, but only checked out the cards just now - they are wild…. I include a picture of the artist from vogue magazine from around the same flower period (I imagine)…

Looked and saw there were 33+ on ebay, found some in japan for under 25 and hopped on one, so we will get an unboxing of that as well.

At the same time I did stumble across another arhat deck for only 18 bucks, so I snapped that up as well - they have various marketplaces at zenmarket and it pays to give them all a hunt from time to time

Just hit 1500 - I think I can hold the line at 2000 though if I am real careful (This far, and no farther!)…

I'd never used zenmarket before and was just checking it out. Are shipping costs normally $20+ like I'm seeing?

I usually end up buying things that are free shipping within japan - occasionally I get a small reasonable shipping charge there. It’s a mix of sellers so you do need to pay attention like ebay.

After building up some things in the warehouse you tell them to pack everything up in a big box and ship it overseas to you - that charge for me is normally around 30 bucks but can climb higher if the box gets too large or too heavy pretty easily.

I usually get to spread 30 to 60 bucks across up to a dozen or more purchases and the savings from US prices more than makes up for the higher shipping

I will note that for shipping I go first class - I always choose DHL and have them repack with extra reinforcement and full insurance - they tend to take a few days to pack it, another day or two for it to get picked up, then its at your door a few days later

You can safe another 10 bucks or more than I do with other shipping choices

Portfolio52 says I have like 1,600 decks, but it is a bald faced lie. It only counts unique decks, which insanely undercounts my total number of decks.

Yeah - I did a count of the total decks a month or three back - it was around 2500

You can use the list view, scroll to the end, do a select all, copy , paste into a spreadsheet, and clean up the mess a bit

It’s not something you want to do a lot of…. Rather a pain

Thanks. I searched through some more and was able to snag one of the UNO sets for about $26 with shipping. Any particular marketplaces on that site you'd recommend when card searching?

Bradius wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 5:13 pm Portfolio52 says I have like 1,600 decks, but it is a bald faced lie. It only counts unique decks, which insanely undercounts my total number of decks.

P52 isn't squirrel friendly. Should a petition be started?

Zen plus, amazon, rakuma, and I think yshopping are all amazon like services - so lots of random vendors, sometimes they have old stuff but mostly new stuff - so look there for a current release first, and as a last ditch effort last

Yauctions, Rakuten and mercari are all like ebay (with Rakuten and mercari being “buy it now” only - they only added Rakuten and mercari recently, prior service I used for mercari over there was more expensive and cumbersome - these are good place for all things, though I have found the poker card market over there to be lacking, decks are there to be found - picked up some J&T Maidens and A.Bandits for about ten bucks a deck - some other really nice odd finds

The “other shops” choice I use whenever I find an item anywhere else in japan - just enter in the link for the purchase page on any web site and they handle the rest

“Find it for me” I think I tried once early on - not even sure - likely for an impossible to find item that they didn’t find - certainly worth a try if you want to see if they can locate something you don’t see - I think they can search the web for local items much better than we can and may turn things up easier than I imagine.

Favorite find there was this one I think - also 10 or 15 bucks…. Templar Knights (2011)

Finally picked up a camera - should be here shortly. A lightly used Canon Powershot A810 - the cheapest I could find that had good optics and color balance

Took a lot of blurry pics (whole Wild West deck) - needed to set macro focus - before I retake them I figured I would take some practice shots using bikes, so I might get feedback on any lighting or other adjustments I should make before going whole hog…

This is the best I managed to figure out this evening - going to toss one more light into the mix to see what that does tomorrow - on a tripod with a two second timer after hitting the shutter button to avoid shaking it

And some others…

Make sure all your lights are the same color temperature And make sure you're setting the white balance

Any color temp better than others? Warm or white?

As long as your white balance matches the lights I don't think it matters - but my photography hobby was like 15 years ago and I was certainly never a pro I wonder if you may get very slight differences using different color temps?

I’ll give it a whirl with a few different ones and see what comes of it - thanks

My photography hobby was in summer camp about 40 years ago - and it wasn’t that hot back then

GandalfPC wrote: ↑Mon Apr 17, 2023 2:57 pm My photography hobby was in summer camp about 40 years ago - and it wasn’t that hot back then

Darn climate change.

Everything looks good except the white balance! Once that's fixed, then it's a matter of honing your craft.

Here's a whole spiel if it helps...
To get the 810 to help you with neutral white balance: 1) AWB can be influenced by both background and subject color. Find as neutral a background as you can. The less color in it the better (egg shell white isn't neutral white). Best: You could buy a neutral gray/white card from a photography shop for both the background and target. 2) If you're using steady artificial light (ie not strobes), try anything as close to *full spectrum*, *5000k-5500K*, or *daylight* lamps as you can get. 3) Next, select white balance: Func/Set button > White Balance (left side menu) > White balance settings (bottom menu). Here are the choices you'll see: *AWB* Auto White Balance works sometimes, except it can shift frame to frame. AWB may also incorrectly adjust for strong colors it detects in the cards or the background; Use *Daylight* if you're getting excellent color from the lamps you're using. Daylight won't shift on you; *Cloudy* will add an amber color to compensate for too much blue light - for example if you're shooting under skylight; *Tungsten* will add blue to compensate for the yellow in tungsten bulbs; *Florescent* will add magenta to compensate for the green in florescent bulbs (white balance is just filtering out unwanted color/light by adding complimentary colors in the camera's processor); Best: try the *Custom White Balance* setting: 1) Set up your camera and lights and where you're going to shoot your cards. 2) Place a white/neutral gray target where your card would be. 3) Fill the frame so that the entire picture is of the neutral target under your lights - don't cast a shadow on it when you do this. 4) Press "MENU." The camera examined the color of the light bouncing off the neutral target and picked a complimentary color of that specific light and is now balanced, or neutral, for it. 5) Remember to change the WB setting to AWB or whatever when you're done. Lastly, if you're really into it, shoot RAW instead of jpegs and correct to your heart's desire in post.

Awesome! Thanks a bunch

Lighting problem solved - 16 inch light box, also WB cards on way - anything worth doing being worth overdoing…


I figure that will be enough room for me to set up a scene in - will deal with “out of the box” lighting at some point but this seemed the best low cost easy to take out and put away solution

Starting to make some headway - currently trying to determine how much to reduce the exposure (if any) or the light brightness - these (pretty sure all of them) have exposure down one step (0.3)

Coin close up with exposure at 0 , Pistachio card stand at -.3

Think it’s close enough for government work - will start cutting through the unboxing backlog next…. Let me know if you spot anything in need of polish

I figured out a last test to run - camera is supposed to have a good Auto mode (which I didn’t manage to activate my first day out)

Will take a few shots with the Auto on using the light box. When viewing those images on ipad and hitting the info button it tells you the settings the camera used - so I will see how those compare to the ones I am using to see if I should try other adjustments.

Don’t think I will leave it in auto, although I might find it works better than I do if it can keep the custom white balance…

The photos look a little over saturated with yellow.

I’ll try resetting the color balance, and give it a crack on full auto as well

Dug out my Graphic Cheatsheet 2 cards - pallets with reference numbers - we will get this puppy sorted out in a jiffy

I will check the colors with procreate or similar using eye dropper


(This just a quick iPad shot, not a camera reference)

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Follow up:

That all sounded fine, but the colors are not really true on those cards and the way they are printed is less than optimal - think I will pick up some paint swatches and try those - not sure if they come with color value or if I will just have to eyeball it.

I can say that auto did change the iso up to 250 from my 100-160ish attempts - looks better

Pic with devil pin is the auto setting.

Also changed to largest format images until testing done, probably drop back down after


Manual:


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Auto:



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Going to get some paint swatches to see if they are of use (just a few blocks away) and try some manual shots at iso 250 along with some autos and see if I can do better…

I had thought the iso 100 would give me sharpest pic, but even the Lightbox does not seem to have the light needed for that - I am guessing its a sunlight or equivalent only option