My Hobby Of Making And Photographing Micromounts.

[Akousticplyr]

Stunning!
Thanks for sharing these.
‘Nature is amazing...!

 

[olkofri]

Textbook quality! ?

Yeah, I once studied mineralogy.

 

[BROBS]

Prompted by forum member Mike's thread on unusual hobbies I thought what a great opportunity to show off some of my favourite micromounts.

A micromount is simply a selected piece of rock that contains or is even made up entirely of an interesting mineral. There are around 2000 minerals on this planet and many of them are in crystal form, and often as not these crystals are very tiny and can only be viewed through a microscope.

I use both a Meiji and a Leica Wild for this purpose. For photographing these micromounts I use a standard Canon DSLR fitted with Kenko extension tubes with a Canon macro lens designed for the purpose but sometime Pentacon or Tokina lens mounted in reverse fashion. All this sits upon a tripod for stability as taking pictures at this level means everything has to be rock solid.

Again, due to the magnification required to make an image I have had to use 'image stacking' where many images are taken at minute distances apart then combined into one image to create the correct depth of field. The most I ever did was something like 129 individual shots to make one image!

Most pictures below are roughly 3 - 4 mm wide.

Enjoy.

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The above Grossular garnets picture is a mere 2mm from left to right.

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The above Scholzite is made up of 129 separate images.

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That's enough for now.

Regards,

Jay.

Simply amazing

I collect minerals and crystals, but have never done anything like this!

superb work

 

[weezell]

Jay, ABSOLUTELY GREAT stuff!! Thanks for posting...

 

[weezell]

I miss the pipes in art series that was on forever! Always some great stuff to...

 

[mawnansmiff]

Thanks yet again guys for the kind words, you've cheered me up no end.

Anyway, time for bed, even micromounters need their sleep ?

Regards all and stay safe,

Jay.?

 

[charf]

Would be interesting to some photography like this of mould versus plume on tobacco.

 

[BROBS]

Would be interesting to some photography like this of mould versus plume on tobacco.

There was a thread where a guy used a digital microscope of some kind and took pics of Tobacco mold.

 

[Tommy Boy]

Beautiful stuff for sure. I never knew that was even a thing before today. You must have a steady hand and patience of a saint. Im more of a hammer and welder guy so it's intresting to see the gifts God has given to others that are vastly different from mine.

 

[donjgiles]

Incredibly beautiful work!

 

[SpookedPiper]

That's beautiful work!

 

[jpmcwjr]

Beyond stunning!
Well done- beyond well done.

Thanks!

 

[mawnansmiff]

Just as folks understand, betwixt the camera and the tripod there is a sliding rack device that works by turning a knob that operates a worm drive.

Once all is set up and the lights are on (lots of light needed), the camera is edged forward by turning the knob until the frontmost part of the specimen is in pin sharp focus. This is viewed on the PC screen. At that point the first image is taken by clicking the mouse as to touch the camera would throw everything off kilter.

Then the knob is turned again moving the camera a minute distance closer to the specimen, then another shot taken and so it goes until you reach the end of the specimen.

Using designed for purpose software, these multiple shots are cleverly stitched together keeping only the in focus parts of the image and the end result is as seen above. I use no post camera touching up, tinting or anysuch thing, I only crop the image to size. Each image can take twixt twenty minutes to an hour to produce.

Glad you guys liked them.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Here is an image of the type of sliding rack mentioned above. It allows the user to move the camera left/right backwards/forwards as required.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Last tranche.



Above is Cuprite, a major source of copper.



Above is iridescent hematite.



Above is Mimetite.



Above is Native Copper. Some metals, gold mostly appear 'ready made' in nature (no need to smelt ore) here is 'ready made' copper.



Above is Olivinite. Most blue/green minerals are copper based.



Above is Pyrolusite.



Above is Siderite sitting atop Muscovite.



Above is Siderite from Cornwall.



Above is Specularite.



Above is Tourmaline.

Four more in next post.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Last tranche (2) I didn't know there was a restriction of 10 images.



Above, stunning spherules of Variscite.



Above Variscite again.

And finally, two images taken with my biological microscope of a single scale from a Bass fish. Magnification is something in the region of 600x.





Phew.....done!

Regards,

Jay.