More Mont Saint-Hilaire

microcollector · Post by **microcollector** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:11 pm

Here are three more mineral photos of Mont Saint-Hilaire material. These are stacked with Helicon Focus. Nikon D50 on Meiji EMZ-5TR.
Cordylite - (Ce)

Galena

Zircon

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:59 am

As I have said in the past, I don't know a lot about minerals or rocks, though I live in an area rich in minerals and gemstones. I really like the first image though, of course all are good. Those Meiji stereos are really nice for stuff like this.

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:16 am

Three interesting crystals Doug.

The cordaylite pic is particularly good - lighting is excellent giving a real sense of depth and substance to an object that is maybe 2mm long - nice detail too.

The galena pic is a more difficult subject with large areas of white mineral - but again the lighting/exposure is good. I like this one too.

The Zircon is a smaller crystal and neither it or its matrix give you much in the way of contrast to work with. However, you've done a pretty good job with a difficult subject. Out of interest, is that a reflection of some part of your equipment in the bottom right corner of the facing surface

. I noticed something similar in pic2 - a little cyan coloured "ball" on the upper surface of the galena crystal.

Bruce

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:25 am

Wonderful photos Doug. It must be fun to look under the microscope and look for these micro crystals (even harder to identify I bet). The zircon is very nice.

Let me ask...how big is your collection?

microcollector · Post by **microcollector** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 6:39 pm

I pulled out the galena specimen a took a look at it under the scope. That spot is not a refection but exits on that face. As a move the crystal about I can get the color to change. There is a very thin colorless coating on the galena. On some faces it appears to cause a play of colors when oriented just right.

What I see on the zircon is a fracture on the prism face that extends across the corner of the pyramid face. Transparent crystals seem to be very difficult to photograph using stacking. Internal defects and reflections that do not show up strongly in the initial setup seem to get enhanced as I progress through the stack. I have tossed a number of photos because of this. Most of my stacks end up between 20 to 40 images. I have a Z axis stage that is micrometer driven and divided into .01 mm divisions.

I currently have 4600 specimens cataloged in my collection. There are about 100 waiting to be cataloged and a garage full of self collected material to be gone through, trimmed, and cataloged. I seem to collect material faster than I can process it. Last yeqar I only picked up about six pieces, all from the South Point area of the Big Island in Hawaii. This year does not look any better for collecting, too many 7 day work weeks. Retirement is coming in about 2 years.

Doug