f2tY requested a series of 5 ‘mini’ mice to take back to Japan as omiyage. I made two beads featuring a black motif, and f2tY chose the half and half solid black and filigrana black raked lotus style, which proved to be rather frustrating to photograph:^[1] this is the only one for which I took two views:

Mini mouse in black: glass, gold fill,base metal, stainless (308) steel, black onyx, .018 49 strand beadalon. Overall length approx 6"/15cm; focal approx 13x15mm, strung & photographed 08aug22: sony ILCE-7c, sony 90mm macro lens; godox manual flash (set between 1/4 and full power). f/2.8, ev 0, 1/160s, ISO 50

I was deeply grateful that the studio setup, which I've barely used with this camera, worked ‘out of the box’ without my having to fiddle with it, as I was in a tearing hurry, since f2 was busy packing to return to Japan. I could see the first image didn't really show the filigrana, so I tried again:

As above. Image editing (for both) includes removing specular highlights, cropping and scaling.

I liked neither the styling nor the bokeh of the 2nd image as well, and to add to the aggravation^[2] , it's the tail, rather than the focal, that's in focus, so it still doesn't really show the style of bead. But it's what I've got.

I do like the touches of gold on the tail; they make a nice contrast to the black.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.