Origin of my "mystery keris"

[A. G. Maisey]

Gentlemen, I have taken the liberty of doing a little bit of alteration to the way in which the images of these keris were presented.

What you see now is the orientation that I , and probably most other keris conscious people need to enable us to make relevant comments on a blade:- the blade should be upright and the gandik should be to the viewer's left. I have resized the images to a height of 600 pixels, this size will usually let us see the complete image in one viewing, without scrolling.

However, as has been pointed out in another current thread, we are not looking at keris, we are looking at images of keris.

Those images represent the keris, and we try to get some sort of an idea of what the real keris actually looks like from that image.

If the image is not a true representation of the keris, it becomes virtually impossible to draw supportable conclusions

Regretably neither of these keris have been photographed in a way that makes supportable comment possible --- well, at least I can't make any comment that I can support.

The images need to be produced with the camera focussed on about the middle of the blade and at 90 degrees to it, that way you get an image that retains the true proportions of the blade.

Greybeard has mentioned that the image of his keris became distorted during processing. This distortion makes it very difficult for us to get any sort of a clear idea of what sort of blade it is that we are looking at.

Sirek appears to have photographed his keris with the camera pointed along the blade, rather than mid-blade at 90 degrees.By photographing at this angle, the proportions of the blade are also distorted.

I would guess that many of us have some ideas about these blades, but if others are like me, nobody is going to commit himself to an opinion because there is insufficent accuracy in the images to be able to say too much about these blades with any degree of certainty.

[Greybeard]

Thank you, Alan. I see the problem now.

Heinz

[Greybeard]

Gentlemen,

I posted inadequate pictures. As I cannot provide better pictures, I would like to suggest: Let this useless thread die!

Thank you all for participation and best regards,

Heinz

[sirek]

all thanks for your comment,

I take the picture again, but now taken as discussed, and see if I have understood it correctly.
So the next time I place a picture, I hope it's good enough to be discussed.

Like Heinz i'm also relatively new and a "uninformed" keris collector and we always want to learn and increase our knowledge if possible

and in my opinion that is what counts, to learn from others what yourself do not know, or put in the right direction

[A. G. Maisey]

Hienz, I do not consider this to be a useless thread, on the contrary, I consider it to be quite valuable, because it has allowed us to come to terms with a recurring problem.

That problem is the presentation of images of keris that will permit a fair comment to be made in respect of the keris.

The problem with the images that you posted is not so much in the actual photography, but in the processing of the image data after you took the photograph. Regrettably much of what we see in a digital photograph depends upon what we do with the image data that the camera has collected.

What you need to do is to crop, re-size and rotate your image before you post it.

To do this you need some sort of software.

I use Photoshop, which is pretty much like using a 12 gauge shotgun to kill a mouse, but there are a number of free photo processing programs that can be downloaded from the web.

Perhaps somebody with more knowledge in this subject than I have can make some recommendations?

Sirek

Thanks for your new image. Yes, that's good, we can now see pretty much what this keris looks like.

However, as I have already noted:- it is an image of a keris, not a keris.

Because of this any remarks that are made are always subject to the caution that an opinion can be altered if the actual keris were to be examined.

For me, there are several slightly confusing elements in your keris. Some of these elements point to a Madura origin, some point to a Central Javanese origin, some could be interpreted as East Javanese, but not Madura --- Madura is a part of East Jawa.

Based upon what I can see, I would only be prepared to say that this keris is probably Javanese --- which doesn't really tell you any more than you knew before we started.


EDIT re software

Hienz, you may care to have a look at this page:-

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pix...eephotoedw.htm

[Rick]

I see a lot of pitting in Heinz's blade; pitting that is not seen on other examples shown in this thread .

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Rick, so do I, and it is fairly uniform pitting, however, I'm not prepared to guess at origins based only on this pitting--- I'd like to see what the blade really looks like before I make any comment.

[Greybeard]

Originally Posted by Rick

I see a lot of pitting in Heinz's blade; pitting that is not seen on other examples shown in this thread .

Yes, I have never seen this kind of pitting on another keris in my collection.


Thank you, Alan, for your valuable recommendations regarding posting pictures. I'll try it again later.

Heinz