My Christmas/Birthday Present

Sorry Bob - I didn't wind back far enough!

Justin

Second curtain sync works well on my still functional Canon 10D, and 2 seconds over 1 second exposure time is just being paranoid. I am also using Canon MT-24EX dual macro flash, but using off-camera flash mounts to better position the flash heads.

Ok, at the risk of boring people, here are a new set of pictures. These are of a piece we got from Patrick Haynes, who collected it on 9/23/2010 at the Gila River in New Mexico. It has 3 balls of mesolite (2 shown in the pictures) where some of the mesolite's needles are spearing chabazite crystals.

I took these pictures using the rear LCD as a way of visualizing the crystals. I used the 5x magnification of the LCD to do fine focusing. I then took the pictures while in the LCD mode, so I think I avoided the shutter vibrations.






I am interested in feedback about how to improve. One things I am noticing right off is that the 3 mm shot is not as sharp as I would like. I suspect this is because of the exposure time and vibrations. I did take the pictures with a 2 second delay to dampen any vibrations from pushing the camera's shutter button. I know that eventually I should hook up my laptop and do it that way, but to do so will require rearranging my room.

I also know the black spots are in the pictures, I left them in deliberately so you could see them I ordered Giotto's "red rocket," which seems to be recommended by several web sites. Hopefully that will resolve the problem.

Thanks!
Bob

Same technique, but this is a herbertsmithite from San Francisco Mine, Chile.




The photoshopping I did was limited to color balancing (based on a white card) and cropping.

Thanks
Bob