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Mineral PhotographyMFT camera for minerals?

10th Aug 2015 18:28 UTCFlorian Baur

I'm starting to get into mineral macro photography and am trying to decide which camera to choose.

So far I was using a Pentax K10 I borrowed and liked the results. On a german board (mineralienatlas) a user suggested to get the Olympus E-M5 or better yet 1 and the M Zuiko 60 mm 2.8 lense.

At first I was vary as it's an MFT camera and I thought the main advantage of those was their lesser weight and size. Both of which doesn't matter too much when photographing static objects at home. I then read, however, that MFT actually has an advantage over larger sensors when it comes to macro as the depth of field is larger.

So it seems the E-M1 with the 60mm/2.8 lense is good equipment. But since it's not too cheap I'd like to hear some more opinions.

Sooner or later I also want to go into microphotography - will the E-M1 be a good choice in that regard as well? I'd rather spend a little more on the camera body now if I get a model that will be with me for quite some years to come.

PS: Yesterday I tried photographing a beautiful neon green fluorescent Uranophane with red tufts of probably Billietite. The results were really bad :-( ... the green was dim and instead there were purple flares at many parts of the specimen. It seems like fluorescense photography is yet another difficult field.

11th Aug 2015 06:11 UTCStephan Wolfsried Expert

I still use the Sony Nex7, four years ago the top model from Sony among the MFT cameras. They are now available for about 600 € new. The results are pretty good.

The whole setup see here:

http://www.mindat.org/article.php/2089/My+setup+chronology

Stephan

11th Aug 2015 18:11 UTCFlorian Baur

Thanks, that's very good to know and I think MFT is the way to go for mineral specimens. I have two questions... :)

1) Since both the E-M1 and the NEX 7 are MFT cameras, the objectives should be relatively easy to exchange? The Olympus 60mm/2.8 seems to be quite good, would it work with the Sony? If not...

2) I want to start with scales not beyond 1:1, so just a simple macro lense should be okay for the start. Which one are you using if at all? If it's in the setup chronology, sorry, I couldn't find it.

Beyond 1:1 it probably doesn't matter what the body's make is as those are microscope lenses anyway?

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